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| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
The Associated Press
Fewer students would receive free and reduced-price meals at school under legislation that Republicans pushed through a House committee. On a vote of 20-14, the Education and Workforce Committee backed the bill, which would scale back the number of schools in which all students receive free or reduced-price meals. The measure would allow a trial period of so-called block grants for school meals in three states — meaning those states would no longer receive unlimited federal dollars for students who qualify for the free and reduced-price lunches, and states wouldn't have to follow most federal nutrition standards.
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THE Journal
Traditional student desks and chairs are a relic of the 19th and 20th centuries. The 21st century classroom, with its 1-to-1 ratio of devices to students and emphasis on collaboration and communication, demands classroom furniture that is mobile and device-friendly. Some schools have replaced their traditional classroom furniture with tables and chairs on wheels to facilitate flexibility and quick transitions between individual, small group and large group activities. Others have implemented soft seating such as sofas and easy chairs with computing surfaces built into the armrests to improve student comfort.
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Center for American Progress
One of the most enduring and contentious debates in education circles concerns the best way to hold schools and districts accountable for improving outcomes for students and closing achievement gaps. Lawmakers, teachers, district administrators, parents, and other stakeholders — all with strong and differing opinions — have wrestled for decades with questions about the appropriate role of the federal government compared with that of states and school districts in the operation of schools and the measurement of their success. Over the past 15 years, however, a national consensus slowly has emerged among the disparate parties and coalesced into a clear movement toward more sophisticated accountability systems and fewer federal mandates.
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The Atlantic
A research team in Chicago has spent a year studying whether students who are taught to be in touch with their emotions do better academically. And they say the initial results are promising. Perhaps counterintuitively, when kids take a break from a classroom lesson on the solar system to spend a quiet moment alone watching a three-minute nature video, or participate in a teacher-guided breathing exercise with their class after lunch, they seem to become better overall students.
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U.S. News & World Report
Science, technology, engineering and math, better known as the STEM fields, need to be integrated throughout a child's education to be most effective. That was the the key takeaway at the "Shattering Silos: Implementing Interdisciplinary Learning" breakout session at the U.S. News STEM Solutions Conference. Panelists included Doug Moore, vice president of digital education strategy and business development at the New York Hall of Science; Greg Pearson, scholar at the National Academy of Engineering; Amy Sabarre, PK-12 STEM coordinator at Harrisonburg City Public Schoools; and William Wolfe, chair of the engineering department at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.
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Over 125,000 Copies Sold
Share with your staff the teaching system that transforms classrooms!
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The Conversation (commentary)
Penny Bishop, a contributor for The Conversation, writes: "Fully 92 percent of American teenagers go online daily. More than half of them do so several times a day and a quarter are online 'almost constantly.' I'm a mother of two teenagers who fall into that latter category. And as a parent and a teacher educator, I work on ways in which we might capitalize on teens’ social nature and fondness for technology to promote something positive. A question I wrestle with is: can social media help students learn? Or is it just wishful thinking?"
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The Atlantic (commentary)
Lara N. Dotson-Renta, a contributor for The Atlantic, writes: "One of my children is spinning in a circle, creating a narrative about a princess as she twirls. The other is building a rocket ship out of a discarded box, attaching propellers made of cardboard and jumping in and out of her makeshift launcher. It is a snow day, and I've decided to let them design their own activities as I clean up and prepare a meal. My toddler becomes the spinning princess, imagining her character's feelings and reactions. What seems like a simple story involves sequencing, character development, and empathy for the brave princess stuck in her tower."
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eSchool News
Ensuring equal access to resources can help improve educational outcomes and close achievement gaps for children from low-income families, according to a new study. The study from the Educational Testing Service notes that improving state finance systems can go a long way to support equitable funding and increased resource access. The report, "Mind the Gap: 20 Years of Progress and Retrenchment in School Funding, Staffing Resources & Achievement Gaps," was commissioned by ETS and written by Bruce D. Baker, Rutgers University and Danielle Farrie and David G. Sciarra of the Education Law Center of New Jersey.
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District Administration Magazine
The 3,000 students in rural Maine's Regional School Unit 19 begin compiling electronic portfolios of their schoolwork in pre-K, when the district issues every child a Google account. In the elementary years, teachers snap and upload digital photos of handwritten work. In the upper grades, students accustomed to electronically documenting their school lives habitually upload essays and lab reports and record video of their oral presentations.
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THE Journal
More than half of students (58 percent) in a recent study could not read content displayed on a 70-inch flat panel in an average-sized classroom. The study from Epson and Radius Global Market Research asked 106 students ages 12 to 22, in groups of about 30 at a time, to read educational content such as charts and text-based information displayed on a "top-selling 70-inch flat panel" in a traditional 30-foot-by-30-foot classroom. The students sat in five rows, with the first row about 8 feet from the display and the last row at a distance of about 27 feet.
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Education Week
What do you mean when you say "personalized learning?" That's one of the questions prompted by a new report that aims to provide guidance for states as they use new flexiblity, provided by the Every Student Succeeds Act, to do deeper work to shape learning around students' needs. The report, by the organization iNACOL, offers examples of promising practice in this area. And in doing so, it serves as a strong reminder of what personalized learning is not: It's not just about technology.
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NPR (commentary)
Anya Kamenetz, a contributor for NPR, writes: "Let's pretend I asked you to run a mile as fast as you can. Now let's pretend I asked you to run a mile as fast as you can, and if you broke nine minutes, you'd get $90. Which mile do you think would be faster? A new study suggests that students taking a test behave like you or me: They do better with a little incentive. Dollars and cents, that is."
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| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Education Week
With the crush of news about the Every Student Succeeds Act, Race to the Top may not be as high-profile as it once was — but there are lessons states can learn from their work in the competitive-grant program, according to a report released by the U.S. Department of Education. States reported success in helping to create new data systems and regional resource centers, but sometimes struggled to support activities related to curriculum and classroom resources.
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The Associated Press via ABC News
Politicians in Texas, Arkansas and elsewhere vowed defiance — and other conservative states could follow suit — after the Obama administration told public schools across the U.S. to let transgender students use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. The federal government's guidance was met with tearful praise from parents of transgender students.
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The Christian Science Monitor
Virginia, the state that leads the nation in the school-to-prison pipeline, also disproportionately suspends African-American male students and those with disabilities from school for issues as minor as a sarcastic tone, a cell phone, or too many unexcused absences. "Suspended Progress," a report by the Legal Aid Justice Center, says that the fix would be for school administrators to shift away from so-called zero tolerance policies, which often mandate punishment for even slight infractions, in favor of working with families and installing more preventive and supportive discipline.
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EdSource
A small item in Gov. Jerry Brown's May revision of California's $122 billion budget for the coming fiscal year touches at the core of how the state prepares most of its teachers. Brown is proposing to spend $10 million in the form of $250,000 grants to encourage expansion of what are called "integrated" or "blended" preparation programs that allow undergraduates to earn their teaching credential by the time they graduate. That may seem like a commonsense approach. But California is the only state where the customary path to a teaching credential is a four-year undergraduate degree followed by a fifth year of post-graduate study in which a prospective teacher studies various aspects of teaching and gets trained in instructional methods.
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NAESP
Strengthen arts education in your school with a 2016 Champion Creatively Alive Children grant. Crayola will award up to 20 grants, which include a $2,500 monetary award and $1,000 worth of Crayola products. The deadline to apply is Monday, June 20, but those who submit an application by Monday, June 6, will receive a Crayola product Classpack. Visit www.naesp.org/crayola for more information.
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NAESP
In seeking a higher level of academic achievement and broader fulfillment of each child's potential, public schools have considered various instructional approaches. At the same time, societal pressures have expanded the expectations for and scope of the schools' curriculum to address issues such as diversity, suicide, AIDS, and bullying. These movements and their intersection have led to litigation, often based on constitutional challenges by parents who have perceived certain curricular activities as violations of the First Amendment's establishment clause. For most such cases, the courts have relied on the tripartite, or Lemon, test or a variation of it. The decisive parts are often whether the activity at issue has a secular purpose and, if so, whether the activity's primary effect is religious rather than secular.
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