Beth’s Briefings (2-24-16)

Here are news and opinion stories educators, advocates, policy wonks and makers are talking about today:

 

Two K-12 initiatives that are launching this week aim to capitalize on the mounting support for taking a more holistic approach to educating poor children, a shift away from the view that has heavily emphasized that schools alone can counteract the effects of poverty. (Education Week)

 

The Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law late last year, ushered the United States into a new era of education policy. Gone are the highly qualified teacher regulations and one-size-fits-all school metrics. Annual testing will continue, with student results reported by race, income, gender, and disability status, among other categories. States will be required to intervene in only a few circumstances, leaving districts with most of the responsibility to fix schools that aren’t getting results. (The Seventy Four) 

 

Among the chief complaints that educators and parents have had about standardized testing is that it puts too much pressure on young students. (Education Week)

 

The Obama administration says too many minority students are being singled out for special education and is asking states to address the issue. With new data in hand, the Education Department said Tuesday that disparities persist in the nation’s public schools, where oftentimes minority students are more likely to be identified as having a disability and face harsher discipline than their white counterparts. (Associated Press)

 

In recent years, college campuses have been rocked by black students protesting racial bigotry, and women’s groups denouncing sexual harassment. But in the age of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s class-based politics, we’re beginning to see something new: the rise of low-income and working-class students protesting longstanding inequalities on campus that in the previous decades were mostly ignored. (The Atlantic)

 

Policy issues related to dual language learners (DLLs) are almost always seen in terms of students who are native Spanish speakers. There’s good reason for this: nearly 3.8 million of the United States’ 4.9 million DLLs are native Spanish speakers. The next most common native languages are Arabic and Chinese, at 100,461 and 99,943, respectively. (EdCentral)