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| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
District Administration Magazine
In Florida, parents flock to after-hours tours of the Hillsborough County Public Schools' kitchens. In Arizona, the Facebook page dedicated to the food and nutrition department of the Chandler Unified School District has over 58,000 followers — more than the school system's total enrollment. And all across the country, parents and students use smartphones to access school menus, check the nutritional content of individual dishes and rate items for tastiness.
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The Conversation
A recent international study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found no positive evidence of impact of educational technology on student performance. It did not find any significant improvement in reading, math or science in countries that heavily invested in technology to improve student achievement. In fact, the report found that technology perhaps even widened the achievement gaps. Does this mean we should abandon attempts to integrate technology in schools? We are researchers of technology and learning in K-12 environments, and our research suggests this would be shortsighted.
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eSchool News
An independent study from Johns Hopkins University shows that a program designed to reverse "summer slide" at scale showed real impact on student engagement and Lexile growth for students who read on the adaptive literacy platform LightSail for as little as 30 minutes per day. According to an extensive meta-analysis of student reading data by socio-economic status (Cooper1996), students in low-income communities typically lose two to three months of learning during the summer, while their peers generally maintain literacy skills or grow during the same time period. Summer slide is cumulative and accounts for more than half of the achievement gap by the time students are in ninth grade.
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The Atlantic
When Sally Mitchell, a science teacher at East Syracuse Minoa Central High in Syracuse, New York, spoke to a group of students at the recent U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl, she remarked that one of her projects is to "finally metricate the USA once and for all." Much to Mitchell's surprise, her comment about the metric system — officially it's known as the International System of Units — evoked a strong reaction. She received a standing ovation from about 300 middle-school scientists.
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Education Week
If your classroom has students with special needs, modern technology can be a massive blessing. Digital devices and screen capability have helped countless students overcome communication hurdles and obstacles to class participation. While technologies from across the field have been coopted to help students with special needs and disabilities succeed in school, specially designed technology, or "assistive technology," has proved particularly useful. Assistive technology in K-12 classrooms is designed to improve the functional capabilities of a child with a disability.
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Edutopia
Social and emotional learning plays a key role in children's academic readiness and success. Students with strong SEL skills participate more in the classroom, have more positive attitudes about and involvement with school, are more accepted by classmates, and are given more instruction and positive feedback by teachers. Without SEL skills, young children are more likely to dislike school and perform poorly on academic tasks, and later experience grade retention and dropout. In the same way that assessment is important for understanding students' academic learning, it is also important for understanding students' social and emotional learning.
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By: Douglas Magrath
 The study of linguistics is connected to the teaching of English as a second language. In the first part of this article, we looked at how the grammatical description of a language is conveniently divided into two complementary sections: morphology and syntax. Here we will look at some of the systems English uses for communication and analyze the structure of English sentences. This information is designed to aid ESL teachers.
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The Atlantic
It wasn't long into Damon Holmes's tenure as the new principal of Malcolm X Shabazz High School this fall that Sharon Cook, an administrator at Shabazz, knew the school and students were going to be okay under the new guy. Cook was having a meeting with Holmes in the principal's office when he suddenly stopped talking. In mid-sentence. Cook wondered what prompted the dramatic pause — until she glanced around and saw a student hovering outside. Holmes had interrupted his meeting with a key staff member because one student needed his help. Cook instantly realized that in Holmes' eyes, students come before everything else.
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By: Dean Wiech
 As summer is upon us, not all school districts employees are looking forward to relaxing for a few months. System administrators often need to prepare during the off-student months for the new school year by making all the appropriate changes to their network, including upgrading software and changing their systems. As is often the case, hundreds of students need to be added to the roles and have accounts created for them, while hundreds more move up to different grade levels, and still hundreds more graduate out of the system.
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THE Journal
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 50CAN and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers published a report addressing the underperforming virtual charter school sector, calling on states to overhaul legislation and to close chronically low-performing schools. The 16-page report, "A Call to Action to Improve the Quality of Full-Time Virtual Charter Schools," builds on another study published late last year that found that full-time virtual charter schools fall behind classroom-based public schools in nearly every metric. Students enrolled in full-time charter schools usually have 180 fewer days of math and less than half the amount of reading days than public school.
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| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Education Week (commentary)
During our coverage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, we've focused on English language learners, students of color, and students from disadvantaged economic backgrounds, among others. But the law also makes some noteworthy changes for a group of students that often gets ignored — those being educated in the juvenile-justice system. Some of the key changes included in Title I Part D of the law are designed to help students who are transitioning out of juvenile justice back into traditional public schools, or trying to, at least.
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EdTech Magazine
Schools and libraries nationwide missed out on more than $245 million in E-Rate funds in fiscal year 2014, analysis shows. According to StateScoop, Midwestern states — including Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wisconsin — failed to claim more than $38.7 billion of E-Rate funds, or nearly 11 percent of the money allotted to them in fiscal year 2014. The tally was worse on the East Coast, StateScoop reports. Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia forwent $73.4 million in E-Rate — nearly 23 percent of the grant money committed to the states.
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Education Week
Starting in 2017, students in Louisiana schools will learn cursive writing in 3rd grade — and they'll keep getting instruction on it through graduation. A bill signed by Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards this week applies to both traditional public schools and charter schools. The two-page bill states: "Cursive writing shall be taught in all public schools. Each public school shall ensure that such instruction is introduced by the 3rd grade and incorporated into the curriculum in grades 4 through 12."
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The Associated Press via KOMO News
The state of Washington says it is making progress complying with a court order to change the way it pays for K-12 schools and is urging the Supreme Court to cease daily fines of $100,000 after it found the state in contempt. In a brief filed in connection with the court's ruling in 2012 that lawmakers weren't meeting their constitutional responsibility to fully fund basic education, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said the "Legislature has not sat on its hands" and the justices should dissolve their contempt order.
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EdSource
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has given Los Angeles Unified a one-year reprieve from a ruling requiring the district to spend potentially hundreds of millions of additional dollars on English learners and low-income children to comply with the state’s new school funding law. In a letter to the district, Torlakson agreed to delay enforcement until 2017-2018 of a California Department of Education ruling that found the district wrongly determined that as much as $450 million it spent on special education services also satisfied the Local Control Funding Formula's requirement for additional programs and services for low-income students, foster youth and English learners.
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NAESP
The new Every Student Succeeds Act gives unprecedented support for the role of principals. It includes authorization for funding to states and districts that can be used in a myriad of ways to support principals, such as mentoring and induction for early career principals, and professional learning for mid-career school leaders to improve instructional leadership skills. States and districts are now developing plans on how to use ESSA funding, which requires principals, both aspiring and currently in the profession, to advocate for programs and opportunities that will meet their needs — as well as show that investing in school leadership can improve student outcomes.
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NAESP
As the nation mourns the loss of life in the recent Orlando shooting, school communities must prepare to help students cope with this traumatic event. The National Center for School Crisis & Bereavement prepared the following suggested responses to address why parents should talk with their children about the tragedy, as well as the questions children are likely to have. Please share with teachers, families and your entire school community.
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