October 27, 2015

Delaware News

The News Journal
Collaboration is key
Opinion by Susan Bunting & Lamont Browne, educators in the Delaware School System
The goal is success for all Delaware students. And it takes all of us working together to achieve that goal. Kids don’t care about the politics, or whether they’re receiving a charter school education or a district school education. They want to learn alongside their peers and friends, and to feel secure about having the supports they need to excel. As adults, the onus is on us to make sure none of them fall through the cracks, and that we’re setting a strong example for the power of working together. We hope to see you Oct. 28th at the Eighth Annual Conference on Education at Clayton Hall at the University of Delaware.

Godowsky is perfect candidate for schools chief
Opinion by Victoria C. Gehrt, Ed.D., president of the Delaware Chief School Officers Association; Kevin E. Carson, Ed. D., executive director, Delaware Association of School Administrators; Frederika S. Jenner, president, Delaware State Education Association; and Susan E. Francis, executive director, Delaware School Boards Association.
Successful and productive leadership must include not only deep and relevant background and experience, but also a tone, style, and communication ability that will forge consensus and yield results. We believe Dr. Godowsky is eminently qualified to provide just that kind of leadership for the public education system in Delaware.

Report: teacher training programs need work
Delaware college leaders are criticizing a new report that suggests they and other programs that train Delaware teachers should do a better job recruiting highly qualified, diverse candidates and placing them in Delaware schools. They say the reports hold them accountable for things they can’t control and use the wrong metrics to measure success. State leaders say they’re open to improving the system, but they hope it will start a conversation for how those programs can improve.

DSU wins big grants, including work on Mars mission
Delaware State University researchers have won a $5 million grant from NASA to continue helping in the exploration of Mars, school officials said Monday. DSU also announced a separate, $1.2 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at growing graduation and retention rates for low-income and first-generation students. The Gates Foundation Grant will help DSU build its new Individualized Development plan mentoring tool. Starting in Fall 2015, every new freshman at the DSU received a personalized plan that assessed his or her skills, identified places they need to improve, and laid out a path for students to get the degree they want.

JPMorgan Chase adding 1,800 jobs
Bill Wallace, JPMorgan Chase’s chief administrative officer for Delaware, said the bank is counting on a steady pipeline of well-trained workers from a variety of education initiatives in Delaware. He specifically mentioned Delaware TechHire, a program aimed at providing training to entry-level computer programmers through accelerated community college programs and ZipCode, a new coding school that opened in Wilmington this year.

WMDT
DSU receives $6M+ in grant funding
The grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an effort to develop innovative ways to increase the retention and graduation rates of low-income and first-generation college students. DSU says in Fall 2015, they implemented Individualized Development Plan, which is a mentoring tool for freshmen, that assesses his or her skills and strengths, identifies opportunities, determines a general path for the student and guides the students on that path. The grant will support data collection, and analysis of the pilot program.

Delaware State News
Culinary Arts program provides recipe for success
A new school program is exploding all over the state and nation, not only adding some fun to students’ days, but giving them more options after high school graduation — culinary arts. “We have some great culinary programs in schools in Delaware and they provide a great opportunity for students because the restaurant business is one of the biggest employers in the state and one in four Americans have worked in food service at one point in their lives,” said Rita Hovermale, education associate of Career & Technical Education at the Delaware Department of Education. To make the state’s culinary programs as successful as possible, many schools are now participating in The National Restaurant Association’s ProStart program, a standardized culinary curriculum.

DSU receives two grants totaling $6.2 million
“We believe in this country higher education is the bridge to opportunity,” said Dan Greenstein, director of Post-Secondary Education at the Gates Foundation. “For far too many this bridge is far too narrow, too complicated to cross and the toll is too high.” After several visits to DSU by Mr. Greenstein and other Gates Foundation staff, the decision was made to give $1.2 million to help DSU in its efforts to make a college diploma more attainable for hundreds, maybe even thousands of students. DSU will collect statistical data over the next 10 years to determine the effectiveness of Individualized Development Plan. University president Harry L. Williams said DSU is looking forward to aggressively using the IDP program and seeing greater education rates over the coming years.

National News

Wichita Eagle
Panel begins tackling new finance formula for Kansas schools
Lawmakers launched a special education study committee with an ambitious agenda to come up with recommendations on a new school finance formula and student educational outcomes.

Governing
How much school funding is enough?
Nearly every state has faced lawsuits over school funding. The political battle now moves to Mississippi, where voters face competing ballot measures on the issue.

Education Week
Students take too many redundant tests, study finds
Students across the nation are taking tests that are redundant, misaligned with college- and career-ready standards, and often don’t address students’ mastery of specific content, according to a long-awaited report that provides the first in-depth look at testing in the nation’s largest urban school districts. The comprehensive report by the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools examines testing in 66 of the council’s 68 member school districts, looking at the types of tests administered, their frequency, and how they are used. The findings are expected to add hard numbers and evidence to the fractious national debate around whether U.S. students are being overtested.

The New York Times
Surprise: Florida and Texas excel in math and reading scores
When the Education Department releases its biennial scorecard of reading and math scores for all 50 states this week, Florida and Texas are likely to look pretty mediocre. In 2013, the last time that scores were released, Florida ranked 30th on the tests, which are given to fourth and eighth graders, and Texas ranked 32nd. But these raw scores, which receive widespread attention, almost certainly present a misleading picture — and one that gives short shrift to both Florida and Texas. In truth, schools in both states appear to be well above average at teaching their students math and reading. Florida and Texas look worse than they deserve to because they’re educating a more disadvantaged group of students than most states are.