March 22, 2016

Delaware

Cape Gazette
Cape residents to vote on new elementary school plan
Cape Henlopen’s plan for improving its four elementary schools goes to voters Wednesday, March 23. If district voters approve the plan, the district will get two new elementary schools, and two elementaries will be renovated. Increasing enrollment has been at the forefront of the district’s latest school improvement plan. “The main reason we’re doing this is because we’re growing,” said Superintendent Robert Fulton, before one of the five community meetings held throughout the district since February explaining details of the plan.

Delaware Public Media
Gov. Markell backs Christina referendum
Gov. Jack Markell is throwing his support behind the upcoming Christina School District referendum. “They deserve our support,” Markell said. “Our childrens’ futures and our state’s prosperity depends on our commitment to great schools. And I urge everybody in Christina to support the district’s referendum and go out and vote.” His rare and possibly unprecedented public endorsement of a school tax question comes in a video released Monday by the district just two days before the referendum vote Wednesday.

WDEL
Brandywine hopes residents don’t ‘turf’ upcoming referendum vote on artificial grass
With a referendum vote just one day away, some residents in the Brandywine School District have called into question the need for one of the big-ticket items on its upcoming ballot–turf fields. There are only seven schools with artificial surfaces throughout Delaware’s public high school system, and should Wednesday’s referendum pass, Brandywine would become the first district above the canal to have turf fields at any of its high schools.

Unprecedented: Markell throws support behind Christina referendum
The Christina referendum gained a prominent and influential supporter in Delaware’s own governor Monday. “Support the district’s referendum and go out and vote,” said Governor Jack Markell in a video message distributed widely by the Christina School District. The video marked the first time WDEL could recall a governor publicly throwing support behind a local referendum, and it comes at a time when voters in two other school districts are also heading to the polls.

National

Boston Business Journal
eBay founder helps fund Mass. education startup
Tinkergarten, an education technology startup based in Brooklyn and Northampton, Massachusetts, said that it raised $1.6 million in seed funding from investors led by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network. Other investors include Blue {Seed} Collective, City Light Capital, 500 Startups, and Outbound Ventures. The startup specializes in outdoor early childhood education, helping educators lead activities for kids outside. The activities include “outsmart a leprechaun” and “celebrate the winter solstice.”

Education Week
Capacity of state ed. departments waning on brink of ESSA rollout
Some state education agencies may end up being limited in their capacity to take full advantage of opportunities for flexibility provided in the Every Student Succeeds Act because of drastic budget cuts in recent years, educators and experts say. While K-12 spending will increase in most states for the next fiscal year, many legislatures are reluctant to give education departments more money, instead directing them to funnel the money to school districts.

Governing
A new roadmap to better teacher evaluation and support
Commentary by Rich Crandall, Colorado’s Commissioner of Education and Danielle M. Gonzales, Assistant Director for Policy with the Aspen Institute’s Education and Society Program
If you’re planning a trip across town or across the country, these days the first step is to grab a smartphone to check Google Maps or Waze to get directions. But we’re old enough to remember when every journey to a new place required unfolding an unwieldy paper map and then tracing out a course along tiny lines that may or may not represent the most efficient route. In some states, education policymakers are still using the equivalent of paper roadmaps.

The Atlantic
Why Teach for America is scrapping its national diversity office
A shakeup at Teach for America, the controversial nonprofit that places recent college graduates in low-income school districts across the country, will eliminate the organization’s Office of the Chief Diversity Officer this fall. The announcement comes amid layoffs that will shrink the national staff about by 15 percent. While Teach for America says the restructuring is an attempt to move the focus from central management to regional operations, the elimination of the diversity office is a particularly surprising turn for an organization that has prided itself on recruiting people of color to become teachers.

Tulsa World
State superintendent Joy Hofmeister defends new academic standards for public schools despite critical report
Just days before they could clear their final hurdle, proposed new academic standards for Oklahoma public schools are facing threats from inside the state and out. State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said the last-minute input and criticisms are political ploys. “As I have said in recent days, people from outside our state are swooping in at the eleventh hour to try politicizing Oklahoma’s standards. This report is evidence of that.