• As the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision on racial segregation in public schools approaches, a recent Gallup poll finds the vast majority of Americans (90 percent) believe educational opportunities for black children have improved since 1954.
But while 59 percent of adults think black children do have educational opportunities equal to those of white children, 38 percent say they do not. Nearly two-thirds of that group say black children do not have equal educational opportunities because of discrimination.
Opinions diverge sharply along racial lines. Two-thirds of blacks (68 percent) believe black children do not have parity with white children, compared to 34 percent of whites.
Districts win on overtime issue
• South Carolina school districts won a major legal battle in April when a federal court threw out 25 lawsuits charging the districts with failing to pay employees for overtime work as required under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Those districts -- as well as others across the nation -- had been targeted in an aggressive lawsuit campaign by the School Litigation Group alleging FLSA violations.
The court held that South Carolina school districts are entitled to immunity from private FLSA lawsuits under the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 11th Amendment provides that a state is immune from suits brought in federal court by its own citizens and citizens of another state, unless the state unequivocally has consented to such suits or Congress has expressed a clear intent to revoke this immunity.
The issue in this case was whether school districts in South Carolina should be considered "arms of the state" and, therefore, entitled to the state's immunity. Courts in different states have issued contradictory rulings on this issue.
The court in South Carolina, citing a long list of state mandates to school boards, including mandates driven by the No Child Left Behind Act, ruled that -- for 11th Amendment immunity purposes -- local districts are arms of the state.
Feds launch new teacher initiative
• The U.S. Education Department announced a new initiative April 21 to help the nation's best teachers and education experts spread the word about best practices and the latest research findings.
This spring and summer, the department will host teacher roundtables on effective teaching, professional development, teacher leadership, and ways to advance the teaching profession.
The initiative also includes summer workshops for teachers; a "Research-to-Practice Summit" for teachers, to be held in Washington, D.C., this summer; and e-mail updates to teachers on the latest policy and research developments.
Study calls AYP an incomplete measure
• The use of the adequate yearly progress (AYP) measure in the No Child Left Behind Act does not paint a complete picture of whether a school is successfully raising student achievement, concludes a study issued in April by the Northwest Evaluation Association. The study involved 230,000 students in 22 states.
According to the report, two schools with identical average scores on state tests would seem to have similar success with their students. Yet one school might have started the year with low-performing students and was able to get them to grow twice as much as the students in the other school.
"Schools differ in the amount of growth students achieve," the study finds. It says the current NCLB regulations should be modified to include information on the growth of student achievement. This is necessary for several reasons:
• Schools with substantial growth in student performance could be subject to sanctions if they don't bring their students all the way to the proficiency level.
• High-performing students who are far beyond the proficiency level don't have to grow further under the current regulations.
• Students who take advantage of the school choice option do not necessarily move to a school with a better learning environment if they move from a low-status, high-growth school to a high-status, low-growth school.
"Without an indicator of individual student growth, we don't know whether a high-status school is maximizing student potential or merely maintaining the status quo," the report states.
Five finalists named for Broad Prize
• Five school districts were named finalists for the 2004 Broad Prize for Urban Education. The districts are Aldine Independent School District in Houston, Texas; Boston; Charlotte-Mecklenburg in Charlotte, N.C.; Garden Grove (Calif.) Unified; and Norfolk, Va.
The Broad Prize is awarded annually to an urban district making the greatest overall improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps across ethnic and income groups.
The winner, to be announced in the fall, will receive $500,000 for college scholarships. The other finalists will each receive $125,000 for scholarships.
Three of the finalists -- Boston, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and Norfolk -- are members of NSBA's National Affiliate program.