Eye on Education 7/17/2018

July 17, 2018

Your daily synopsis of education news

Rauner signs two gun control bills; urges action on school safety bill

Gov. Bruce Rauner signed two gun-control measures into law Monday and urged state lawmakers to take action on a bill that could affect schools.

At a ceremony in Chicago, Rauner signed House Bill 2354, the so-called "red flag" bill that allows guns to be taken away from people who pose a threat to themselves or others. He also signed Senate Bill 3256, which imposes a 72-hour waiting period to purchase all guns, not just handguns, according to The State Journal-Register.

At the ceremony, Rauner also said lawmakers should allow schools in counties that approved a sales tax increase for building improvements to use a portion of those funds to hire resource officers and mental health professionals to deal with potential gun violence in schools.

The idea is one of a series of recommendations from the Illinois Terrorism Task Force.

NPR Illinois caught up with its director, Mike Chamness, former IASA director of communications.

"We were looking for recommendations that avoided getting into the political quagmire of gun control and things like that," Chamness told NPR Illinois, "but practical recommendations of things that incrementally might make schools safer."

You can read the ITTF report here. IASA was among the groups on the working group. IASA also did a podcast with Chamness about the report. You can listen to that here.

After-school programs a boon for kids with ADHD

After-school activities might be just what the doctor ordered for kids with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), researchers suggest.

Health Day report that after analyzing records on more than 4,000 children with ADHD, the investigators found that nearly 72 percent of them took part in one or more after-school activities. And if they did, they missed fewer days of school and had less severe symptoms of the disorder.

"Anecdotally, we've heard that having a diagnosis of ADHD can sometimes be a deterrent for participating in after-school activity programs," explained study co-author Dr. Nicole Brown, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City. "So, I was surprised to see that high prevalence of participation" among children with ADHD. I thought it would be lower, and it's encouraging that it's that high."

Health Day

U of I's president urges 'big picture' education reform

The president of the University of Illinois System says the state needs a more strategic, big-picture approach to its public education system.

"The state should be looking at the big picture of public education," Tim Kileen told Crain's Chicago Business. "I'm not suggesting closing anything, but I think there is a lot of room for improvement. The transitions in particular are inefficient. The types of students that can support regional economies are very important in the thinking so that's why we want to map the innovation agenda into the public education reform agenda. That seems to be missing in the dialogue."

Crain's Chicago Business

Every Student Succeeds Act

IASA associate director/legal counsel Sara Boucek discusses how implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act is going in Illinois and details what superintendents need to know about new school designations being rolled out as part of the law. This podcast is sponsored by American Fidelity. Consider American Fidelity for a different opinion on employer benefit solutions for education.

Listen Here

Advocates push for replacing letter grades

According to Education Dive, a work group of state school board members and education advocates in Ohio has recommended ditching traditional A-F letter grades on report cards for schools and replacing them with more descriptive terms, such as "meets standards," reported the Journal-News.

The group also recommended eliminating K-3 Literacy and “indicators met” as graded measures. And they suggested a deeper look at the value-added system Ohio uses to measure school performance.

Education Dive