At the end of September 2016, the U.S. Department of Education announced $245 million in new grants to start and expand public charter schools. The InformED Report for October 27, 2016 began with those grants. It then turned to mental health, with a New York law adding the subject to required health classes and new survey figures on anxiety among college students, and closed with two views of where higher education was heading: a former MIT dean’s plan for a university without classrooms, and a Penn conference on online courses.
In this edition
- The Education Department awarded about $245 million in Charter Schools Program grants, $177 million to eight state agencies and $68 million to 15 charter operators.
- New York will require mental health instruction in school health classes from July 2018.
- A national survey found that 15.8 percent of college students had been diagnosed with or treated for anxiety, and 21.9 percent said it had hurt their academic work.
- Former MIT dean Christine Ortiz described a new university with no classrooms, lectures or majors, and Penn hosted a conference on the future of MOOCs.
$245 million in federal grants for charter schools
On September 28, 2016, the Education Department announced new grants of about $245 million under its Charter Schools Program, which pays start-up costs for new charter schools and helps existing ones expand. The Wall Street Journal’s Tawnell D. Hobbs reported that eight state education agencies received about $177 million and 15 charter school operators received $68 million. The department said the program, launched in 1995, had invested more than $3 billion and, in the previous decade alone, had helped open more than 2,500 charter schools serving about one million students.
Education Secretary John B. King Jr. tied the grants to equity. “Ensuring that all students have access to an academically challenging and engaging education is critical to preparing them for college and career success,” he said, and he linked the support to “strong charter school authorizing and accountability.” The department described the grantees as committed to communities facing steep academic challenges.
For district leaders in areas where charters were growing, the grants were a reminder that federal policy at the time actively funded new schools of choice. Planning for enrollment, facilities and partnerships had to take that growth into account, as did conversations with authorizers about accountability for the new schools’ results.
Mental health in schools and on campus
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law requiring schools to teach about mental health in state-mandated health classes, starting in July 2018. Michael Virtanen reported in The Washington Times that the state’s 40-year-old health education mandate already covered alcohol, drugs, tobacco, and the prevention and detection of cancers. The bill’s sponsors hoped the new lessons would help students recognize signs of mental illness in themselves and others and seek help, and would reduce the stigma that leads to isolation and bullying. They pointed out that about half of students with emotional or behavioral disorders drop out of high school. Glenn Liebman of the Mental Health Association of New York State said many schools already taught the subject, “but a lot of schools don’t.”
The college figures showed why the subject mattered beyond high school. BU Today’s Joel Brown recalled a 2014 study by Penn State’s Center for Collegiate Mental Health, covering more than 100,000 students, which found that anxiety had overtaken depression as the leading concern among students visiting campus clinics. The American College Health Association’s 2015 survey supported that finding: 15.8 percent of college students, nearly one in six, said they had been diagnosed with or treated for anxiety. In the same survey, 21.9 percent said anxiety had affected their academic performance in the past year, up from 18.2 percent in 2008. These were self-reported survey results, not clinical counts, but the direction was consistent across both sources.
For high school leaders, the two stories connected. Students who learn to recognize anxiety and know where to get help carry that knowledge into college, where the pressures grow and support is less visible. A health curriculum that names mental illness plainly is one of the few tools a school controls directly.
Two visions for the university of the future
At IdeaFestival 2016, Dr. Christine Ortiz, former dean for graduate education at MIT, described the nonprofit residential research university she was building from the ground up, with no classrooms, lectures, disciplinary departments or majors. TechRepublic’s Alison DeNisco reported her argument that universities were not keeping pace with technology or preparing students for life in the 21st century. “Our higher education system is still stuck in the Middle Ages,” Ortiz said.
The Daily Pennsylvanian’s Chasen Shao covered a more incremental view at Penn’s third annual Learning with MOOCs conference, held October 6 and 7. Massive open online courses had been created in 2008, and Penn had begun offering them with a grant from the U.S. Department of State. Provost Vincent Price and edX chief executive Anant Agarwal were among the panelists. Agarwal described MOOCs as an answer to what he saw as a broken system, and called his approach the “unbundling” of the four-year degree.
Neither idea had yet shown it could replace the traditional campus, and both came from advocates rather than from evidence on student outcomes. Still, for high schools preparing students for college, they were a sign that the shape of higher education was being questioned openly by people inside it.
Sources
- “U.S. Department of Education awards $245 million to support high-quality public charter schools,” Herald Chronicle, September 2016.
- Tawnell D. Hobbs, “U.S. Gives $245 Million in Grants to Support Charter Schools,” The Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2016.
- Michael Virtanen, “NY law will require mental health education in schools,” The Washington Times, October 3, 2016.
- Joel Brown, “Anxiety the most common health diagnosis in college students,” BU Today, 2016.
- Alison DeNisco, “Why the university of the future will have no classrooms, no lectures, and lots of tech,” TechRepublic, October 2016.
- Chasen Shao, “The future’s looking good for online learning,” The Daily Pennsylvanian, October 2016.
About the InformED Report
The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on October 27, 2016. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.
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