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GlobalInformED ReportSocial-Emotional LearningScience and Lab SafetyK-12

InformED Report: Schools Promote Mental Wellness for Students

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 5 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 30 (1 minute 29 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 301 min 29 sedCircuit on Vimeo

The InformED Report for March 16, 2017 looked at schools taking responsibility for students’ mental health. New Zealand educators were preparing for the country’s first positive education conference, and a BBC report from Manchester showed how much one school was doing, and how uncertain its funding had become. The edition then turned to Texas, where the State Board of Education had given preliminary approval to biology standards that kept language challenging evolution, and closed with the new Snap Foundation, which Snap Inc. said would support arts, education and youth.

In this edition

  • New Zealand schools were building wellbeing into their values and curriculum, ahead of the Positive Education NZ 2017 conference in Christchurch.
  • A Manchester secondary school paid for counselling, a nurse and pastoral staff from its own budget, and its head feared cuts would end that support.
  • The Texas State Board of Education gave preliminary approval to biology standards that retained language challenging evolution, and posted them for public comment.
  • Snap Inc. disclosed a new Snap Foundation, with the company and its co-founders each pledging up to 13 million shares over 15 to 20 years.

Schools and student wellbeing, from New Zealand to Manchester

EducationHQ’s Michelle Curran reported that New Zealand schools were treating student wellbeing as a priority in its own right. Schools were promoting it through their vision, values and strategic priorities and through the deliberate design of their curriculum, while also responding to wellbeing concerns as they arose. In March, educators, leaders and decision-makers would meet in Christchurch for Positive Education NZ 2017, the country’s first conference on combining the science of wellbeing, drawn from positive psychology, with good classroom practice.

In England, Judith Burns of BBC News described what that responsibility looked like in one school. At Whalley Range High School, a girls’ secondary of about 1,500 students in inner-city Manchester, each year group had a pastoral manager who assessed students’ mental health, and a school nurse and counsellor were available most days, all paid for from the school’s general budget. The counselling service had a waiting list. Executive head teacher Patsy Kane said the hardest cases were those beyond the school’s capacity, because local services were overwhelmed, and she did not know how much longer the school could protect counselling as budgets flattened and costs rose. The government had just announced mental health first aid training for every secondary school, and school leaders’ associations asked how the wider plans would be funded.

The two reports agreed on the starting point: teachers are often the first adults to notice that a student is struggling. What they showed school leaders was the gap between noticing and helping. A school can build wellbeing into its curriculum and train staff to spot warning signs, but the support behind that, counsellors, referral routes and specialist care, depends on budgets that schools rarely control on their own. Leaders planning wellbeing programs needed to plan the funding and the outside partnerships with the same care.

Texas biology standards and the evolution debate

In the Austin American-Statesman, Julie Chang followed the Texas State Board of Education as it pared down the state’s science standards. A committee made up mostly of school district officials had recommended trimming or removing four high school biology standards that asked students to examine phenomena evolution cannot readily explain, citing in part the time students needed to master the concepts. The board, made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, kept much of that language. In a preliminary vote on February 1, 2017, it restored a requirement that students examine scientific explanations of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record, against the committee’s advice.

A further preliminary approval allowed the Texas Education Agency to post the proposed standards in the Texas Register for public comment. The language under debate had first entered the standards in 2009, and the board planned a second public hearing and final votes in April. When this edition aired, the outcome was still open. Because Texas is one of the largest buyers of instructional materials in the country, science teachers and curriculum directors well beyond the state had reason to follow the wording closely.

InformED Report spotlight: the Snap Foundation

The spotlight went to philanthropy from an unexpected source. Engadget’s Chris Velazco reported that Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, had disclosed in its IPO filing that it established the Snap Foundation in February 2017. After the offering, the company and each of its co-founders pledged to donate up to 13 million shares of Class A common stock to the foundation over the next 15 to 20 years, and the filing said its programs were expected to support arts, education and youth.

The filing offered few details about specific programs, timing or governance, and the value of the pledge would depend on the share price over many years. Snap’s shares began trading on March 2, 2017. For schools and education nonprofits, the pledge was a sign that one of the newest technology companies intended to put some of its value into education, and a reason to watch what the foundation chose to fund.

Further reading from that week

Sources

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on March 16, 2017. 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.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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InformED ReportSpecial Education and IEPsK-12

InformED Report: Are Special Education Services Being Ignored?

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 5 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 26 (1 minute 31 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 261 min 31 sedCircuit on Vimeo

The InformED Report for February 18, 2017 began in Texas, where federal officials were preparing a second round of investigation into whether the state had held down the number of students receiving special education. It then turned to Turkey, where UNICEF reported real progress in enrolling Syrian refugee children but warned that hundreds of thousands were still out of school. The spotlight went to chefs in the United Kingdom heading into classrooms to teach children about food.

In this edition

  • Federal officials planned site visits to Texas districts the week of February 27 to examine whether the state had capped special education at 8.5 percent of students.
  • The Houston Chronicle’s “Denied” series reported that Texas had set a target in 2004 for how many students should receive special education.
  • UNICEF said more than 40 percent of Syrian refugee children of school age in Turkey, about 380,000, were missing out on education.
  • More than 45 chefs from the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts planned 55 food education sessions in 26 U.K. schools during the first National Adopt a School Week.

A second round of federal investigation into Texas special education

Federal officials told the Texas Education Agency in a letter on January 19, 2017 that they would return to the state the week of February 27 to visit specific districts and schools, Aliyya Swaby reported in The Texas Tribune. The visits followed a listening tour of five Texas cities, where U.S. Department of Education officials heard from the public about special education. The investigation was examining whether the agency violated federal law in the way students were evaluated for special education.

The inquiry grew out of the Houston Chronicle’s investigative series “Denied,” which reported that in 2004 Texas set a figure for the share of students who should receive special education, and that tens of thousands of children had paid the price. The investigation would determine whether the agency had in effect capped special education services at 8.5 percent of students, after the Chronicle reported that eligible students were being purposely excluded. TEA officials repeatedly denied capping services. In a November letter to federal officials, they said districts may have misunderstood the 8.5 percent rate as an absolute maximum. Federal officials said they needed documents, site visits and interviews with agency staff before reaching a decision.

Parents were also speaking out. At a listening session in the Rio Grande Valley, parents described educators who had not been trained on what services the law requires, and Spanish-speaking families said they had not been given resources to advocate for their children. For district leaders well beyond Texas, the case was a warning about how an accountability indicator can become a ceiling in practice. A measure meant to flag unusual identification rates can, once it carries consequences, discourage schools from evaluating children who need help.

Syrian refugee children in Turkey and the risk of a “lost generation”

Nearly half a million Syrian refugee children were enrolled in schools in Turkey, UNICEF said on January 19, 2017, after an increase of more than 50 percent since the previous June. Even so, more than 40 percent of school-age Syrian children in the country, about 380,000, were still missing out on education. “For the first time since the start of the Syrian crisis, there are more Syrian children in Turkey attending class than there are out of school,” said Justin Forsyth, UNICEF’s deputy executive director, after visiting UNICEF programs in southern Turkey.

Forsyth praised Turkey for the achievement but warned that “unless more resources are provided, there is still a very real risk of a ‘lost generation’ of Syrian children, deprived of the skills they will one day need to rebuild their country.” Al Jazeera reported that, according to the Turkish government, close to half a million of the 1.2 million Syrian children in Turkey were enrolled in its schools. The figures showed real progress and a gap that was still very large.

InformED Report spotlight: chefs go back to school

Members of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts were preparing to return to the classroom for the charity’s first official National Adopt a School Week, from February 6 to 10, 2017, Amanda Afiya reported in The Caterer. More than 45 chefs would deliver 55 food and front-of-house education sessions in 26 schools across the U.K., reaching more than 1,500 children. Among those taking part were Gary Jones of Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Phil Howard of Elystan Street and Giorgio Locatelli of Locanda Locatelli.

The academy’s Adopt a School program teaches children about food, cooking, healthy eating and where food comes from, including growing it, and the charity estimated it had reached hundreds of thousands of children since it began. For schools, the appeal was clear. Professional chefs bring skills and enthusiasm that a busy timetable rarely allows, and a lesson about where food comes from can support work on health and nutrition across the year.

Further reading from that week

Sources

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on February 18, 2017. 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.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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InformED Report

InformED Report 10/27/16

by EdCircuit Staff
written by EdCircuit Staff 6 minutes read

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 2 (2 minutes 19 seconds)

The InformED Report: Episode 22 min 19 sedCircuit on Vimeo

In September 2016, a Houston Chronicle investigation reported that Texas had for years held the share of students receiving special education to a target far below the national rate. The InformED Report for October 27, 2016 led with that story and the reaction to it. It then looked at how little education featured in the first presidential debate, and at new federal figures on student loan defaults at for-profit colleges, alongside Senator Elizabeth Warren’s criticism of how the Education Department was treating former Corinthian Colleges students.

In this edition

  • The Houston Chronicle reported that Texas officials had set an 8.5 percent benchmark for special education enrollment, far below the national average of about 13 percent.
  • Education received only fleeting mentions in the first presidential debate and remained a second-tier issue in the campaign.
  • Students at for-profit colleges accounted for 35 percent of federal student loan defaults while making up 26 percent of borrowers.
  • Senator Warren said nearly 80,000 former Corinthian students were being pushed into debt collection.

How Texas kept children out of special education

Brian M. Rosenthal’s investigation for the Houston Chronicle found that, starting in 2004, unelected officials at the Texas Education Agency set a benchmark of 8.5 percent for the share of students who should receive special education services, and then audited districts that served more. The policy was never publicly announced or explained. Districts above the line were asked to file “corrective action” plans for lowering their special education populations. The paper reported that Texas reached 8.5 percent for the first time in 2015, down from about 12 percent a dozen years earlier, while the national average stood near 13 percent.

The Chronicle told the story through families such as Heidi Walker, who had told administrators at her son’s school in Humble that her 5-year-old had been diagnosed with a disability similar to autism, months before a kindergarten meltdown at recess showed how much help he needed. Federal law has required public schools to serve every eligible child with a disability since 1975. By the paper’s estimate, if Texas served students at the national rate, 250,000 more children would be receiving services such as therapy, counseling and one-on-one tutoring. Writing in The Washington Post, Valerie Strauss summarized the finding that the effort had saved the state billions of dollars while denying support to children with autism, dyslexia, epilepsy, mental illness, speech impairments, and even blindness and deafness.

The state disputed the account. The Texas Education Agency said 8.5 percent was an “indicator,” not a mandated goal, and that it did not punish districts that exceeded it. Even so, Education Commissioner Mike Morath said the agency would review its special education program, and House Speaker Joe Straus said he would work with the agency on the problem. According to the Chronicle, no other state had limited special education in this way.

For special education directors anywhere, the story raised a hard question about what drives identification. A district’s obligation to evaluate a child it suspects has a disability comes from federal law, not from a state target or a budget line, and an enrollment figure that looks low can hide children who were never assessed.

Education’s small place in the presidential debate

Politico’s Michael Stratford counted only fleeting mentions of education in the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton raised it most often. She twice mentioned “debt-free college” as part of her economic plan, pledged to invest in education for middle-class workers, and promised to help people refinance college debt at a lower rate. She also suggested that if Trump paid no federal income tax, he contributed “zero for schools.” Trump said the country needed new schools, along with hospitals and airports, but that “we don’t have the money because it’s been squandered on so many of [Clinton’s] ideas.”

Business Insider’s Abby Jackson described education as a second-tier issue in the 2016 election, with both nominees spending most of their time on national security, trade and an email scandal. In Trump’s case, education still followed him through the lawsuits brought by former students of Trump University. For school leaders trying to read the campaign, the debates gave few specifics. The candidates’ written plans, rather than their stage remarks, were the better guide to what either administration might do.

For-profit colleges and student loan defaults

New Education Department data, reported by Lucinda Shen in Fortune, showed that students at for-profit colleges accounted for 35 percent of federal student loan defaults in the three-year period beginning in 2013, down from 44 percent two years earlier. Those students made up just 26 percent of all borrowers. The measure counted borrowers who had missed payments for 360 consecutive days. The release came as the department was tightening its oversight of for-profit chains such as ITT Technical Institute, DeVry, Corinthian Colleges and Brown Mackie College.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts drew attention to what happened to students after a college failed. Common Dreams reported that, in a letter to Secretary John King, she said the department’s student loan bank was pushing nearly 80,000 former Corinthian students into some form of debt collection, despite assurances that they would be eligible for loan discharges. “It is unconscionable that instead of helping these borrowers, vast numbers of Corinthian victims are currently being hounded,” she wrote. CNN Money, meanwhile, offered prospective students a list of questions to ask before enrolling at any for-profit college.

For high school counselors, the default figures were a practical warning. Helping a student compare a program’s cost, completion record and job placement before signing a loan is part of preparing them for what comes after graduation.

Sources

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.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

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