BoardBuzz can think of little it enjoys more than professional development (yes, we were those kids in school). And what better professional development is there than NSBA’s Annual Conference. Yeah, we know, it feels like it just happened . . . but April will be here before you know it and it can’t hurt to start planning things now. Next year’s conference will be held in Chicago from April 10-12. Check out this new video about the conference from our YouTube channel.
It should come with no surprise that the Florida private school voucher program has not helped raise student achievement, according to this article in the St. Peterburg Times. This latest finding is added to the numerous others that have drawn similar conclusions about the lack of effectiveness of vouchers (see here and here).
The study of Florida’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, mandated by the state legislature, showed that students using vouchers are doing no better than their peers in public school. Even voucher proponent Jay Greene was quoted as saying voucher support “promised the moon, and public policy almost never delivers the moon.”
The truth is vouchers are not the answer to improving education for all students and do not maraculously improve public schools. As Congress considers whether to fund another voucher program — the only federally funded voucher program for the District of Columbia – lawmakers should consider these programs’ lack of effectiveness as concluded by so many studies, discontinue the voucher experiment, and redirect the funds to public schools, see NSBA’s letter to Congress here. Also check out NSBA’s Voucher Strategy Center for information and resources.
After years of fighting a Medicaid rule that would’ve cut billions of dollars from services provided to eligible students, school districts across the country are seeing their advocacy efforts pay off. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sibelius announced this week that the agency is reversing the rule and continues to allow school districts to claim Medicaid reimbursement for outreach activities and transportation costs for eligible students with disabilities, see the Federal Register here.
BoardBuzz knows that NSBA appreciates the years of coordinated efforts from school districts and state school boards associations to reverse the rule. Even though the rule was issued in December 2007, our joint advocacy effort has helped delay its implementation through congressional action, see NSBA’s advocacy on Medicaid reimbursement here.
Schools are an essential place where children can get their health services. Eliminating outreach and transportation reimbursement to school districts would’ve denied the most vulnerable children these services. At the end of this fight, the winners are our children.
The U.S. Supreme Court often hands down a flurry of rulings toward the end of its term, and this year is no exception. What set last week apart, for those of us in the education world, was that we got three school law rulings. So here we go:
The special ed case
First, the Court gave us a long-awaited answer to the question of whether parents of a student who never has received special education services in public school can place their child in private school and get public reimbursement. With Justice Anthony Kennedy recusing himself in earlier cases on this question, the Court hadn’t been able to rule definitively.
But last week in Forest Grove v. T.A., the Court ruled that Oregon parents who’d initially agreed with their school district that their son was not eligible for special education services but later pulled him out, without notifying the district, and put him in a residential school, could sue to get reimbursed for the tuition—over $5,000 a month. The details of the ruling, the dissenting opinion, the background on the case, and NSBA’s friend-of-the-court brief all are available starting here, courtesy of NSBA’s Legal Clips.
The big question on everyone’s mind is what kind of fallout we can expect: Will parents who’d like a taxpayer-paid private school education for their children be less inclined to try to work in good faith with their public schools? NSBA General Counsel Francisco Negron tells NPR that this is the scenario that worries schools, and it surely isn’t what Congress had in mind. In the Los Angeles Times, NSBA Deputy General Counsel Naomi Gittins expresses hope that the impact will be limited, since “Most parents do try to work with the school district.” Charles P. Conroy, executive director of a Massachusetts private school, offers reassurance in a Boston Globe op-ed. In this entry on his Education Front blog, Dallas Morning News columnist William McKenzie agrees with the decision but worries that it “could cost districts a boatload of money.” Wall Street Journal columnist and blogger Sue Shellenbarger has mixed feelings.
The media flurry case
The case that got the most intense media interest was, naturally, the Arizona strip search case, Safford Unified Sch. Dist. #1 v. Redding, which BoardBuzz wrote about here. Here, again, the Court ruled that the search of a thirteen-year-old girl suspected of concealing pills went too far, given the limited danger from prescription Ibuprofen and the lack of any reason to think she was hiding the pills in her underwear. Luckily, though, the Court agreed that on a question like this, where even the judges themselves disagree so much, the law isn’t so clear cut that the educators should be personally liable if they made the wrong call. Again, Legal Clips has all the details and background starting here.
The implications? Well, for starters, Gittins tells McClatchy, school officials ”will think long and hard before they authorize a strip search in the future.” That’s probably not a bad thing. But on NPR Negron warns that, as we said last week, the decision also casts uncertainty on searches for other kinds of dangerous contraband, like weapons. And even when it comes to what may seem like more minor threats, he reminds CNN, “The home medicine cabinet now poses a serious threat to students, who may take those medications for abusive purposes.” Watch for future litigation over how “dangerous” something is, he predicts.
The sleeper case
The third case was more obscure and very complex, but it was a biggie in a nation where public schools are tackling the enormous educational challenges of an incredibly diverse student population, and have limited resources ot get the job done. Horne v. Flores was an appeal of lower court rulings that the state of Arizona violated the federal Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA) by failing to fund English language learner programs adequately. The state never complied with the lower court’s order to come up with some rational connection between the needs and the funding provided, but some state officials argued the situation had changed so much since then that the state shouldn’t have to.
The Supreme Court ruled that the lower courts must consider more carefully certain subsequent changes in the educational situation which may mean Arizona no longer is violating the EEOA and should be relieved from complying with the orders on funding. Details from Legal Clips on the case, including Justice Stephen Breyer’s blistering dissent, start here. The Arizona Republic reports on reactions to the ruling here.
One thing that had education and civil rights advocates worried was an argument that the state’s progress with ELL students under No Child Left Behind automatically meant that the state also was complying with the EEOA. An “enormous can of worms” was how NSBA Senior Staff Attorney Tom Hutton described that argument in the journal Diverse: Issues in Higher Education when the case was argued: “How would this play out in the special education context? I have a hard time believing the court would go there.”
And in the end it didn’t go there—not quite, anyway. While the Court rejected the idea that NCLB compliance = EEOA compliance by definition, it did say NCLB was relevant to the question of whether overall circumstances have changed sufficiently that Arizona no longer is violating the EEOA. That’s the question the lower court will have to reevaluate now. The Associated Press reports that the lawyer representing the plaintiffs welcomes the opportunity.
The Supremes to school officials
After such a busy week shaping school law, perhaps it’s fitting that a speech Chief Justice John Roberts gave over the weekend generated a message for school officials. The Associated Press reports that the Chief Justice said they shouldn’t “look to the Supreme Court to set school rules, only to clarify them when officials have abdicated that responsibility.”
Roberts called the Court’s rulings “clarity intended to deal with narrow issues that surface from government actions,” adding, “You can’t expect to get a whole list of regulations from the Supreme Court. That would be bad. We wouldn’t do a good job at it.”
True enough. But the downside of narrow guidance probably is more lawsuits, as everyone learns how to apply these rulings.
| Comments (0)Our own Ann Flynn, NSBA Education Technology Director, speaks on how technology innovation can be leveraged to improve or benefit school district administration. Check out the video available below from Education Week.
Ann Flynn: Why Tech Innovation Matters from Education Week on Vimeo.
This morning at the Council of Urban Board of Education’s (CUBE) Issues Seminar in Chicago, one of the unsung and behind the scenes gurus of the education world spoke to an audience of urban school board members, superintendents, and other education leaders about college readiness and how America needs to make some changes to its education system. Greg Darnieder lead the office of college readiness program for Chicago Public Schools and like many Chicago staff, was asked by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to take some of Chicago’s ideas to the national level. When Mr. Darnieder was in Chicago, his programs brought in over $150 million to Chicago students for scholarship opportunities. A few comments that stuck with the attendees:
And finally, we’ll leave with a quote from the president that Mr. Darnieder shared about education: “In a global economy where the most valuable skill is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity – it’s a prerequisite” - President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009
CUBE continues to discuss the issues, share what is happening around the country and bring it back home to local districts. For more information, check out CUBE’s web site.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a decision that will impact how school administrators proceed when they believe that students may possess harmful drugs in violation of school policy. BoardBuzz previously covered this case in April during our discussion of the Washington Post’s article that wisely recognized the Court’s need to “weigh the rights of students against the duty of school officials to protect safety.” The Court, in its 8-1 decision in Safford v. Redding, ruled that a strip search of a student at Safford Middle School violated her Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights, but held that the school officials were entitled to qualified immunity from the lawsuit. While BoardBuzz is pleased that the school officials were relieved of personal liability in this case, we are concerned that the Court may have set an ambiguous precedent.
The Safford officials, based on a suspicion that Savana Redding was distributing prescription drugs to other students, searched her backpack and outer clothing for the pills. After that search yielded nothing, the principal took Savanna to the nurses’ office, where a search of her undergarments was performed. The court found that this course of action was unreasonable under the Court’s previous decision in New Jersey v. T.L.O. What was missing, Justice Souter wrote in his majority opinion, “was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear.”
NSBA’s General Counsel Francisco Negron says that the majority’s opinion sets a standard that may be hard for school officials to apply. “The home medicine cabinet now poses a serious threat to students, who may take those medications for abusive purposes,“ he pointed out in an article on CNN.com. Despite this reality, the Court’s decision offers little guidance for schools as to what drugs in what quantities are dangerous enough to permit a strip search. ”I think there will be more litigation,” Negron said in a Washington Post article about the decision. For now, principals who seek ensure that students are not hiding drugs on their person must chose between protecting the health and safety of their students or protecting his school from a costly potential lawsuit.
“Justice Thomas in his dissent, warns us that students will now know where to hide their contraband,” Negron pointed out in an editorial in USA Today. Let us hope that his words are not a sign of things to come.”
“In the meantime,” he concluded, “schools will do what they need to do to keep children safe.”
For more information on NSBA’s perspectives on the Safford decision, check out this official statement.
| Comments (1)A recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report on school connectedness concludes that adolescents who feel connected to school have better attendance, higher academic performance and better high school completion rates. What is school connectedness BoardBuzz wonders? When students believe that adults in the school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals, that’s school connectedness.
Congress also noticed the report. During a briefing this week on Capitol Hill, the CDC, a school superintendent and a student described how school connectedness initiatives can reduce high-risk behaviors such as absenteeism, substance abuse and violence. Factors that increase school connectedness include adult support, belonging to a positive peer group, commitment to education and a positive school environment.
The CDC is preparing a toolkit and developing parenting and other resources. In the meantime, they identified 6 strategies to promote school connectedness, including 1) establish decision-making processes conducive to engagement, 2) enable families to be actively involved, 3) provided students academic, emotional and social skills for engagement, 4) use effective classroom and teaching methods, 5) provide professional development of teachers and school staff, and 6) create relationships that promote communication among stakeholders.
Boardbuzz thinks that school boards provide strong leadership for the strategies described above. What are the school connectedness issues and initiatives in your district?
Did you know that?
BoardBuzz would also like to point out that, alarmingly, 34 percent (or approximately 19,000 of the 53,000) of those who became infected in 2006 were adolescents or young adults aged 13 to 29 years. In addition, recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that certain groups of young people are affected disproportionately - more than half of all cases of HIV infection or AIDS among young people during 2003-2006 were male-to-male sexual contact and 70 percent of all HIV/AIDS diagnoses among youth during that same period were among black youth, even though blacks represented only 17 percent of the population in that age group.
Despite these statistics, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report shows that the public’s sense of urgency regarding HIV infection is down, even among some higher risk groups. Moreover, the sense of personal risk has fallen among young adults, and testing rates are stagnant. In addition, two reports released yesterday by the CDC indicate that: 1) far too many people are diagnosed with HIV late in the course of infection, when neither treatment nor prevention can offer optimal benefit; and 2) that only 22.3 percent of high school students who have ever had sex have been tested for HIV. There is, however, as shown in the Kaiser Family report, public support for more HIV prevention spending and a belief that greater efforts on prevention will make a difference.
Young people spend countless hours at school, therefore, schools are well positioned to help prevent kids from engaging in behaviors that put them at risk for HIV infection. But exactly what steps can schools take? A recent CDC fact sheet offers a few suggestions including: 1) collect and analyze data on same-sex sexual behavior; 2) establish safe and supportive environments; 3) provide training on HIV prevention for school staff; and 4) implement effective policies, practices, and interventions that reduce sexual risk behaviors.
Another Strategy: participate in the National HIV Testing Day, being celebrated tomorrow, June 27. As an annual campaign started in 1995 by the National Association of People with AIDS, it is designed to encourage people to “Take the Test, Take Control.” To help celebrate, the CDC has a webpage dedicated to the Day that includes events happing nationwide, posters, tools and a list of partners. Check it out and celebrate!
What are your schools doing to prevent the spread of HIV? Leave us a comment.
BoardBuzz came across this story recently and was left thinking that policies on social media require some real thought. Basically the city government of Bozeman, Montana made headlines last week when their rather curious method of background checks was widely reported.
The crux: the city requested that job applicants hand over logins to sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more. An expected burst of outrage was then heard across the internet. Bozeman has since rescinded the practice and apologized.
Clearly the policy didn’t pass the smell test–even if the only people to access an applicants accounts were HR employees. The mere act of accessing another user’s account or providing another with access to your account violates the Terms of Service for most of the websites in question.
Just how should private information like this be handled in hiring practices? What should students especially know about posting information to sites like Facebook? It’s a tricky subject as even the Associated Press, whose social media policy raised some concern, can attest.
It’s important to find a middle ground that balances privacy rights with an employer’s concerns. Moreover, how should schools handle teacher and student social networking? What are the best practices out there, and how should school administrators handle what appears to be a slippery slope? Let us know what you think. BoardBuzz has a feeling that we’ll revisit this topic quite soon. And we hope to have some answers for you.
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