April 13, 2016
Delaware
Delaware State News
College scholarship expansion proposed
State officials announced Tuesday a bill to expand a state scholarship to cover part-time Delaware Technical Community College students. The General Assembly in 2005 created the SEED scholarship to provide free tuition at DelTech for every Delaware high school graduate who qualifies academically. Applicants must post a 2.5 grade point average in high school, enroll as full-time students the fall semester after their high school graduation and have a clean criminal history. About 13,000 students have met the standards since the scholarship was developed.
Department of Education
83 high school seniors to be honored for outstanding academic achievement
Secretary of Education Steve Godowsky will honor top students from the Class of 2016 at the annual Secretary of Education Scholars banquet Monday at Dover Downs Hotel in Dover. The students’ accomplishments will be celebrated by some of the state’s political and education leaders, who will be joined by their families, district superintendents, heads of charter schools and principals. The number of scholars from each school is based on enrollment, and students are selected by their principals based on both their academic records and community service.
Legislation introduced to expand SEED college scholarship
Building on the state’s progress toward giving every Delawarean access to the education and training required to thrive in the new economy, Governor Markell today announced legislation to expand scholarships that provide two years of free college tuition to Delaware students. The bill, sponsored by Senator Harris B. McDowell, III (D-Wilmington North) and Representative Debra Heffernan (D- Bellefonte, Brandywine Hundred, Edgemoor) enhances the Student Excellence Equals Degree (SEED) scholarship program, which is available to in-state students who graduate with and maintain in college a minimum of a 2.5 grade point average and stay out of trouble.
Rodel Blog
Previewing the Second Half of the Legislative Session
Blog post by Melissa Hopkins, director of external affairs
The Delaware State Legislature is gearing up to return to session this week after a two-week break. As always, a host of education-related legislation is on the horizon. Now that we are halfway through the 2016 legislative calendar, here’s what you need to know in order to keep tabs on all things education-related down in Legislative Hall during the remainder of the 148th General Assembly.
The News Journal
Delaware student invited to White House science fair
A Sussex County student has been invited to participate in the White House Science Fair Wednesday. Mikayla Ockels, recipient of the Practical Impact Award at the U.S. National BioGENEius Challenge in 2015, is a senior at Sussex Central High School. She won the award for her research project entitled “Heritage Hens, Weighing in on Feed to Egg Conversion Rate.” Now in its sixth and final year of President Obama’s Administration, the White House Science Fair honors and celebrates students for their accomplishments in a broad range of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) competitions across the nation.
National
Newsworks
Pa. charter school law ‘worst in US,’ state auditor general says
Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale issued a scathing report damning the state charter law Tuesday, and he blamed many of the School District of Philadelphia’s fiscal woes on state lawmakers who have not revised the nearly 20-year-old measure. “Our charter school law is simply the worst charter school law in the United States,” said DePasquale at a news conference at Philadelphia’s district headquarters. Specifically, DePasquale said, the law fails to give districts the power to ensure that only high-performing charters that serve equitable populations of children are opening.
NPR
A simple cure for education’s jargonitis
Merriam-Webster defines jargon as “the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity, group, profession, or field of study.” For journalists, covering education means fending off lots of jargon. Going to a conference, like the American Educational Research Association annual meeting this week, or reading a research or policy paper, requires wading through waist-deep abstract terms and buzzwords. Many have lost their meaning through overuse, becoming clichés or euphemisms. Others smuggle a whole lot of questionable assumptions in a seemingly innocuous package.
The Governing
Using data, Providence cuts absenteeism and tackles other youth issues
Among Providence, R.I.’s students, chronic absenteeism is a serious problem. In some schools, it’s as high as 40 percent. But that is changing. Chronic absenteeism has decreased by 5 percent in schools that have consistently implemented evidence-based programs. “This is all the more impressive,” said Suzanne Barnard, “when you consider that chronic absenteeism has increased across the school district as a whole.” Barnard oversees the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Evidence2Success initiative, which uses data and proven programs to help young people and their families in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods.
The Los Angeles Times
The plan to get every California kid into preschool
Three billion dollars may sound like a lot of money to spend on preschool — but maybe it isn’t enough. That’s what a group of advocates, former policymakers, researchers and business executives is saying in its push to remake the state’s early childhood education landscape. The $3-billion figure is an estimate of the state and federal dollars that California spends on preschool and childcare each year — but the group of 12, called the Right Start Commission, is calling for the state to increase that expenditure by at least $5 billion each year.
U.S. News & World Report
Education doesn’t need a civil rights solution
Blog post by Gerard Robinson, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
Today, many school reformers have adopted the slogan that “education is the civil rights issue of our time.” President Barack Obama referred to education as the “civil rights issue of our time” during a speech before Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in 2011. Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan used the same phrase to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In a 2015 speech delivered at a black church close to Ferguson, Missouri, Hillary Clinton echoed a similar theme when she declared, “Civil rights in America are still far from where they need to be. …Our schools are still segregated.”