REFORM MARCHES ON
Though the heavily publicized Rolling Stone story of rape and scandal at the University of Virginia has seemingly fallen apart amid accusations of shoddy reporting and fabrication, the school continues to search for ways to curb the universal college culture of binge drinking. While it takes more than social adjustment to stop determined sexual predators, experts agree that irresponsible substance abuse greatly contributes to the number of sexual assaults on campuses.
I DO NOT THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS
With officials from city halls all the way to the White House banging the drum for universal pre-K, Chalkbeat examines the varied definitions of that term. In some jurisdictions, the “universal” part is actually restricted to low-income families; in others, the costs of the program aren’t fully covered. “If [politicians] started out trying to create a universal program and came up short,” one observer notes, “they don’t want to stop calling it universal.”
THIS WI-FI BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTER E
The FCC expanded the E-Rate program that provides high-speed Internet for schools and libraries, disbursing an additional $1.5 billion in funding. The initiative constitutes about a third of the expenditures of the Universal Service Fund, which has seen its budget grow by 20 percent during the Obama presidency. Members of the five-person commission split 3-2 along party lines on the increase, with one dissenting Republican claiming that the proposal “simply pours money into a broken system.”
TURN ON, PLUG IN, DON'T DROP OUT
But expanding Internet access shouldn’t be restricted to academic spaces. Students who can’t log in at home can have difficulties keeping up with schoolwork that is increasingly digitized. The Hechinger Report profiles the city of Kent, Washington, a high-poverty, multi-lingual community that furnishes every student from grades 7–12 with laptops, but nonetheless sees them struggle to complete assignments outside of school. Hot spots in community centers are a useful patch, but education reformers are eventually going to need to tackle the issue of equal access to information and technology.
