Articles in the Policy Formation category

New on ASBJ.com

ASBJThe future is uncertain. The future is volatile. But the future, particularly for schools and school boards is what you make it. The latest edition of ASBJ is to devoted to helping educators and districts create their own successes despite financial constraints, public mistrust and impending changes to federal and state policies. 

From a look at the changing role of school governance to an insightful conversation about leadership from two of the education arena’s heavy hitters, the April issue is full of  useful information and advice to guide you toward the future and beyond.

Naomi Dillon|March 23rd, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, NSBA Publications, Policy Formation|Tags: , |

Sex between teacher, student clearly crosses line, depending on district, state

296-1247241526wes9There are some things that should be so obvious when left up to a simple test of common sense that no formal law should be required to regulate them. One would assume that teachers having a sexual relationship with their students would fall under this category, but apparently some educators need a little more guidance to see the difference between right and wrong.

In the District of Columbia, the only thing that bars a teacher from sleeping with one of his or her students is the age of consent, which is 16 in the District.  That’s right, by current law, as long the student is 16 years or older, a teacher would not be committing a crime if they had sex with that student. Whether this seems like a gross ethical blunder by the teacher or a huge legal oversight by lawmakers, the problem is certainly not unique to D.C. schools.

Georgia state law also holds that those students over 16 are at the age of consent, and therefore a teacher cannot be arrested for being intimate with those students. A unanimous ruling last year in the state of Washington allowed for teachers to have a sexual relationship with students as long as they were over the age of 18.

D.C. Council member Kwame Brown is taking a step in the right direction by sponsoring emergency legislation that would require the firing of any teacher convicted of sleeping with a student, regardless of that student’s age. The bill would not yet allow the District to bring criminal charges against the teacher, but “Brown (D-At Large) and his legislative staff determined…he needed more time to draft that proposal. He instead decided to push for emergency legislation requiring that such teachers be fired, the Washington Post reported Monday.
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Naomi Dillon|March 16th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation, Teachers|Tags: , |

Keeping all students safe

Photo courtesy Stockvault

Photo courtesy Stockvault

Special education is one of the most complicated, misunderstood, and underreported facets of K-12 education. And for journalists, the factors that make special education topics so compelling—the emotions, the politics, and the money (lots of money)—are the same issues that give school board members angst.

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Keeping All Students Safe Act (formerly the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act),

 H.R. 4247, a bill that would mandate states and districts to monitor the use of restraints and seclusion or isolation in all classrooms, report actions to parents, and provide better training for teachers.

The bill is strongly supported by the disability community, but also by education groups including NSBA and the American Federation of Teachers, who typically advocate for local control for school officials on such issues. In spite of this endorsement, quite a few school board members are concerned—and rightly so–that this bill would lead to another unfunded mandate and paperwork for their districts.
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Naomi Dillon|March 15th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation, Special Education|Tags: , , |

The week in blogs

Photo courtesy of Stockvault,com-

Photo courtesy of Stockvault,com-

Stocks and consumer spending may be rising, but the economic recession is still ravaging school districts, as budget woes and school closures dominated the news this week.

In Kansas City, Mo., the school board narrowly voted to close nearly half of its schools for budget reasons.

Commenting on the dismal budget situation nationally, NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant told MSNBC that school boards will likely face deeper cuts in the fall and that their funding problems show no sign of abating anytime soon.

“There is no silver lining, at least in the next 18 months,” she said.

Meanwhile, teachers across the nation were incensed at the firings of all 93 teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island — and President Obama’s apparent endorsement of the move.

“I ripped the Obama sticker off my truck,” a Houston Federation of Teachers official said in a New York Times story. The quote was highlighted by Alexander Russo in his This Week in Education blog.

Employment prospects also weren’t looking up for New York’s embattled Gov. David Paterson, who announced recently that he will not seek re-election amid a series of investigations into his administration.

“Hubris is terminal,” Timothy G. Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association, said in his blog this week, quoting someone who should know: former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. After assessing Paterson’s chances of survival, Kremer turned to a more immediate concern: a state budget that cuts $1.1 billion out of the schools. For more on the possible impact of these cuts, and NYSSBA’s response, go to “Be the Change for Kids.”
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Lawrence Hardy|March 12th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Curriculum, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Wellness|

Save us from “lifestyles!” A modest proposal for Va.’s AG

08-ktc-floor-speech-portraitDon’t you just hate the redheaded lifestyle?  All those pigtails and freckles — that attitude that says “We’re one in 50 and so, so special.” Makes me want to gag.

Ditto for diabetics and their nasty little needles. Don’t they notice kids could be watching?

Finally, and then I’ll stop: Old People. Excuse me, Senior Citizens. Please, somebody: take them off our streets and let them drive their silly golf carts at their retirement homes — far away from the rest of us. 

Fortunately, I’m not alone in my disgust of alternative lifestyles. I have an ally in Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general of Virginia. This month, as you may know, Cuccinelli sent letters to every Virginia public university saying they could no longer include sexual orientation in their anti-discrimination policies because, in his view, the authority to add protected groups rests solely with the state legislature. And luckily, our ever-vigilant Virginia General Assembly has defeated attempts to include gay people in state nondiscrimination policies 25 times since 1997 — a record we can all be proud of.

Now there’s some question over whether the attorney general really has this kind of power over the universities, which have long been allowed — too long, some of us say — to go their own way regarding their antidiscrimination policies. In fact, as one letter-writer to The Washington Post pointed out last week, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and some other state universities have also include veterans as a protected class!
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Naomi Dillon|March 11th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation|Tags: , , , , |

Forget senior skip day; districts, students contemplate skipping the year

Photo courtesy of Stockvault

Photo courtesy of Stockvault

From serious cases of senioritis to the infamous senior skip day, the last year of high school is sometimes wrongly deemed by students as a year to coast through their classes and responsibilities. Even high achievers may soon be skipping out on senior year, but they wouldn’t be playing hooky—they’d be headed off to college.

Twenty-one states already allow students to graduate early, and 35 let students graduate based on performance on state proficiency tests, rather than fulfilling specific course requirements, according to the Education Commission of the States.

A recent USA Today story said that many high school students end up “tinkering with their senior year,” whether this means graduating early or earning college credits while still in high school.

“By the fall of 2011, a small group of high schools in eight states will take part in a new initiative, announced last week, that will allow high school sophomores who pass a series of ‘board exams’ to graduate two years early and move directly to a two- or four-year college,” the USA Today story said. They also mentioned the 50,000 students enrolled in early-college high schools, which operate specifically for this purpose.

In addition to getting students into universities and/or the workforce sooner, eliminating senior year would also take some of the strain off school budgets that are already stretched to the maximum. 
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Naomi Dillon|March 9th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation|Tags: , |

Central office necessary, not a nuisance to providing public education

1453-1249689262vehtI’m really tired of suggestions that school boards can ease their school budget deficits by cutting more administrators from the payroll.

One of the latest to offer this all-too-common recommendation was Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, who recently was talking about his state’s more than $1.5 billion budget shortfall.

“We don’t want to cut public education, so we’re going to have to go to superintendents of schools and say: ‘Listen, you’ve got to find us some administrators, some bureaucrats, some public relations people that we can cut, because we’re not going to furlough teachers,’ ” the Baltimore Sun reports Miller saying.

Now, I applaud any recognition of the importance of teachers—and protecting the instruction that goes on in the classroom. And I’m sure Sen. Miller means well.

But, really, this sounds like one of those off-the-cuff remarks that policymakers spout every once in a while.

And it’s not helpful. It just gets people thinking that there’s fat to cut in today’s school budgets. That many school district central offices are bloated, staffed by people who don’t do essential work.

It ain’t so.

School board members and superintendents know the reality. A school system is a complex, multi-million-dollar operation, and there is a lot of work to be done outside the classroom if teachers are to teach—and students are to learn.
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Naomi Dillon|February 18th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation|Tags: , , |

More snowbound reading: Duncan profile

Want to know what editors do during snow storms? Well, I have two school-aged children who have not been in school all week. We’ve been playing games, watching television, and doing a lot of baking (more brownies, anyone?).

I’ve also been able to catch up  a little bit on my reading. One article that caught my attention was “Class Warrior,” by Carlo Rotella, which ran in the Feb. 1 issue of  The New Yorker.

This profile of Education Secretary Arne Duncan revealed some interesting insights into his background and  motivattion. Education doesn’t usually get a lot of attention from national consumer magazines, so this article was a rarity and a pleasant surprise.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

Kathleen Vail|February 11th, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation|

Race to the top or just to the middle?

Photo courtesy Stockvault

Photo courtesy Stockvault

When it comes to school work, everyone loves a shortcut.  Whether it’s renting the movie instead of reading the book, surfing Spark notes or letting your high-tech calculator handle most of the work, virtually every student has found some way to lighten their workload and still make the grade.

But now it looks as if state departments of education want in on the game too. President Obama’s new Race to the Top initiative aims to motivate schools to improve the way they measure student success, prepare students for college and recruit and retain effective teachers. 

It may be that schools that were not meeting these standards before were being held back because the states lacked money to implement necessary changes. Or it may just be laziness. 

Daniel Willingham, author of the book Why Don’t Students Like School?, sides with the latter. He wrote in the Washington Post‘s The Answer Sheet:

“Here’s the problem. States are not really committed to the reforms the administration envisions. If they were, they would have implemented them, or at least they would have been making a game attempt to do so.  When you pay people to do something, they don’t become motivated to do it. They become motivated to be able to defend that they are doing it. States will do their best to make it appear that they are complying.”
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Naomi Dillon|February 2nd, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Policy Formation|

Breaking news on federal education issues

ASBJ editors have been working this weekend covering the National School Board Association’s Leadership Conference and Federal Relations Network (FRN) Conference in Washington, D.C.

Read our conference updates and breaking news stories at School Board News Today Conference Daily edition.

Coverage runs through Tuesday and upcoming highlights include Arne Duncan’s address to school boards, Race to the Top information, and a look at President Obama’s proposed education budget. 

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

Kathleen Vail|January 31st, 2010|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, NSBA Publications, Policy Formation|
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