**NEWS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY RELEVANT TO THE CENTER'S FOCUS
Keep up with the National Initiative for Transforming Student and Learning Supports.
For details and for free access to the new work entitled: Transforming Student and Learning Supports: Developing a Unified, Comprehensive, and Equitable System,
see http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/newinitiative.html
WA High
Schools Do Away With Federal Testing Requirements, Create Seven Pathways for
Student Success
Starting this school year, Washington students won’t need to pass a federal
test to earn a high school diploma. Instead, there are now seven pathways, and districts
will have some flexibility in how they’re crafted. |https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/nov/29/washington-high-schools-do-away-with-federal-testi/
Prioritizing Federal education grants for economically-distressed
communities. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced the
Department will prioritize funding for grant applications that support
students, teachers and parents in economically-distressed communities, known
as Opportunity Zones. The Opportunity Zones priority will allow the
Department to focus on grantees that do their work in an Opportunity Zone,
grantees that are located in an Opportunity Zone, and grantees that will
increase the impact of each federal dollar by partnering with a Qualified
Opportunity Fund.
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/secretary-devos-announces-grant-priority-support-students-economically-distressed-communities?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=
Social workers help homeless students find safe place to rest. A school district in Idaho and one in Washington state are working together
to get students without stable housing the resources they need, such as
clothing and transportation, says social worker Cynthia Nunez. Social worker
Jil Taylor says it's important to focus on students' mental health, adding,
"To get up and go to school when they are tired, or if they don't know where
they are staying, that's a lot of stress for them." (Lewiston Tribune)
https://lmtribune.com/northwest/help-for-homeless-students/article_bd9b3a61-ac34-5efb-a699-b55a7bbdbf24.html
Connection between racial achievement and discipline. The achievement gap between black and white students is tied to
gaps in discipline rates, according to an analysis of data from the Civil Rights
Data Collection and the Stanford Education Data Archive. Francis Pearman, lead
author of the study, says the findings show that intervention efforts aimed at
closing achievement gaps and addressing discipline may have "spillover effects
on each other."
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/10/16/black-white-achievement-gaps-go-hand.html
As CO Invests More in Preschool, a Gold-Standard Study Shows
Benefits of Full-Day Classes. A new study shows large literacy
gains and other benefits for full-day preschoolers as they enter
kindergarten compared with their half-day peers - timely findings given the
surge of new publicly funded preschool classrooms in Colorado. | Chalkbeat,
Sept. 27
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2019/09/27/as-colorado-invests-more-in-preschool-a-gold-standard-study-shows-benefits-of-full-day-classes/
Child Poverty. Data released today by the U.S. Census
Bureau illustrates the failure of our government to lead on child poverty,
which remains higher in the United States than in nearly all similarly
developed countries. The U.S. Census Bureau found that 16.2 percent of
children (11.9 million) were living in poverty in 2018 and that children are
54.4 percent more likely to live in poverty than adults.
The National Academy of Sciences' landmark study on child poverty released
in February 2019 makes clear that we have the tools to eradicate child
poverty. All that is needed is the political will to deploy them. The study,
called A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, outlines policy and program
changes that, if implemented, would reduce child poverty by half within a
decade (
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bcyf/reducing_child_poverty/index.htm
). Progress is possible. It is time to act. The U.S.
Child Poverty Action Group, a partnership of child-focused organizations
dedicated to eradicating child poverty, recently launched End Child Poverty
US, a campaign to cut child poverty in half within a decade by setting a
national target. Similar approaches in peer countries have proven the impact
of targets. The United Kingdom cut its child poverty rate in half between
1999 and 2009 and Canada is on track to cut its child poverty rate in half
in less than a decade after establishing an expanded child allowance in
2016.
TN — School Officials to Consider ‘Adverse
Childhood Experiences’ Before Discipline
Signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee, Senate Bill 170
requires school systems to come up with plans for assessing students who go
through “adverse childhood experiences” and consider those circumstances
when meting out major disciplinary measures such as suspension or expulsion,
in-school suspension or alternative school.
(The Daily
Memphian)
More States Requiring Mental Health Education.
Several states have either approved or have
legislation in the works related to mental health education. Some of them
are aimed at addressing concerns about additional workloads and teacher
training.
(Education Dive)
Texas works to reform school
suspensions
School suspensions among prekindergarten through second-grade
students in Texas declined by almost 31% between the 2015-16 and 2017-18
school years, according to a report from Texans Care for Children. Data,
however, show that some groups of students -- including those in foster
care, black students and those in special education -- are more likely to be
suspended.
Fort
Worth Star-Telegram
Report: Student Suspensions Have Dropped Under
TX Law
The rate of student suspensions in Texas has
fallen by nearly a third since the state enacted a law barring schools from
suspending children except under extreme circumstances, according to a
children’s advocacy group.
(Associated Press)
How Each State Distributes Money for Public
Schools and At-Risk Students The Every Student Succeeds Act has brought a new focus to school
funding and how it works, including a new federal requirement for states to
report how much individual schools receive per pupil. But the number of
approaches states take to support their schools, and whether they account
for special student populations, still vary dramatically. (Politics
K-12 at Education Week) Schools can replace officers with counselors. Five
Arizona East Valley school districts will now have to decide whether grant
money they now use to pay for security officers should be diverted to hiring
counselors or social workers. The state Superintendent of Public Schools has
advised that Chandler Unified, Tempe Union, Mesa Public Schools, Tempe
Elementary and Kyrene can reexamine their use of School Safety Program
grants they now get for school resource officers. School officials across
the state had hoped that the $20 million appropriation would help them
address the worst counselor-student ratio in the nation. Arizona’s
student-to-counselor ratio is 905-to-1 — well above the national average of
455-to-1 and the recommended ratio of 250-to-1. Throughout late last year
and early this year, students appeared before numerous school boards urging
them to hire more counselors and social workers. Some knew students who had
taken their lives — or attempted to — and said they could have been helped
if counselors were on their campuses. They expressed frustration that the
counselors that were at their schools were overwhelmed not only by their
huge caseload but also by responsibilities that had nothing to do with
student emotional and mental well-being. They also argued that counselors
and social workers were more effective than SROs in preventing violence in
schools because they were better equipped to address the problems that can
provoke a troubled student into attacking classmates.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/news/schools-can-replace-officers-with-counselors/article_b55b1866-9f72-11e9-84b3-4f8aa0fd8bd4.html
OR Students Can Now Take 'Mental Health Days' Home From School see Oregon will allow students to take “mental health days” just as they would sick days, expanding the reasons for excused school absences to include mental or behavioral
health under a new law that experts say is one of the first of its kind in the U.S. (TIME)
https://time.com/5631238/oregon-students-mental-health-days/
Schools struggle with unfunded mandates: Many causes worthy, but
there is only so much money and time available. By law, Indiana teachers
require regular training in such areas as suicide prevention, child abuse
and neglect, CPR, bullying prevention and human trafficking. In the 2019
General Assembly, a new law passed, which takes effect July 1, 2020, that
requires seizure awareness training for all employees who have direct,
ongoing contact with children. The training is to take place upon employment
and at least once every five years. While the various training requirements
address important needs, the state laws often are passed without added
resources to pay for the training or programs required, something often
referred to as “unfunded mandates.” Some government officials are aware of
the challenges posed by increasing unfunded mandates. In the last
legislative session, HEA 1400 requested an education summer study committee
look at unfunded mandates and required teacher training.
https://www.tribstar.com/news/local%e2%80%94news/schools-struggle-with-unfunded-mandates/article%e2%80%94054f37f5-a786-5787-ae06-18fb7696da9a.html
Nation's schools serving more students under IDEA
A New federal data shows that there are more children in special education and they are accounting for a greater percentage of public school students across the country. For the 2017-2018 school year, there were 7 million students ages 3 to 21 receiving services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These students represented 14 percent of all kids attending public schools. The figures come from an annual report by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics that offers a snapshot of
what's happening in American education see
https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2019/06/06/nations-schools-more-idea/26733/
Youth suicide prevalence reaches highest point since 2000.
A study in the
Journal of the American Medical Association showed that adolescents ages
15 to 19 and young adults ages 20 to 24 had suicide rates of 11.8 per
100,000 and 17 per 100,000 in 2017, respectively, both of which are the
highest percentages since 2000. Researchers also found a 14.2% annual
increase in suicide prevalence among teen boys between 2015 and 2017,
compared with an 8.2% annual increase among teen girls between 2010 and
2017.
1.3 Million Homeless Students: New Federal Data Show
a 70 Percent Jump in K-12 Homelessness Over Past Decade, With Big
Implications for Academic Performance. Utilizing data from 44 states, the report shows that students who experienced homelessness during the 2016-17 school year had a graduation rate of 64 percent — compared with a 77.6 percent graduation rate among other low-income students, and a
national average of 84.1 percent. See
https://www.the74million.org/1-3-million-homeless-students-new-federal-data-show-a-70-percent-jump-in-k-12-homelessness-over-past-decade-with-big-implications-for-academic-performance/
FOR THE LATEST FROM OUR CENTER, GO TO
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/review.htm
September is
National Suicide Prevention Month -- See
the resource links at http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/qf/p3002_02.htm
Also access other news stories relevant to improving addressing barriers to learning through links at
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/whatsnew/linkstolatest.htm
We draw on a variety of standard sources to amass the above items
(e.g., ECS e-clip at
http://www.ecs.org/e-clips)
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