April 21, 2016

Delaware

Delaware 105.9
Gov. Markell to announce common core grant
Governor Markell today (Thursday) will announce grants to schools across the state to support implementation of the Common Core standards when he visits classrooms and talks to educators and school leaders at W. Reily Brown Elementary School in Dover.  Joined by school leaders and teachers, the Governor will participate in the second of series of events this week aimed at highlighting work of Delaware educators in implementing the Common Core State Standards and further debunking the myths about the standards.

Middletown Script
Middletown woman named Delaware’s best young mother
A national organization has selected Middletown’s own Michelle Wall as Delaware’s Young Mother of the Year. Wall, 38, has lived in Middletown since 2009. She is a wife and mother of two young daughters. But there is so much more to tell about Wall and her accomplishments. Most recently, in 2015, Wall was elected to the Appoquinimink Board of Education. She won the seat by a wide margin of votes against a record number of candidates for that election year – six.

MSNBC
Wading through the debate over Common Core and ‘opt-out’
Opinion by Governor Jack Markell
The education policy world is being consumed by a noisy politically fueled battle over the Common Core State standards and testing. Presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have repeatedly mischaracterized the Common Core and claimed that they will “get rid of it” if elected. Along with Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, I co-chaired the bipartisan state-led effort through which teachers and education experts — not federal bureaucrats — created the grade-by-grade expectations for math and English.

Rodel Blog
Get involved with Delaware pathways, help Delaware students
As a student, the transition between high school and college or a career can be a tricky one to nail. And the right path is rarely the same for every student. It’s part of the reason why Delaware Pathways exists—to help provide students with options and knowledge for life after high school. The collaborative effort works to better connect K-12 public education, higher education, and state and regional employment needs.

Sussex County Post
Real-life scenarios among agenda items in mock county council session
If Indian River High School junior Chance Kamin were a member of Sussex County Council, he’d support a pitch to hire two employees specifically earmarked for sign regulation enforcement. He’d also favor upping fines for sign code violations from $25 to $1,000. Chance and several dozen other juniors from Sussex County high schools got their chance at governmental decision-making April 14 during Sussex County Boys/Girls State County Government Day.

The Milford Beacon
State pushes for more recycling programs at schools
The state is pushing a five-year program to help educators create innovative school based recycling programs. The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control is rolling out the seventh round of its Universal Recycling Grant and Low Interest Loan Program. Bill Miller, program coordinator for the Solid and Hazardous Waste Management Branch, has been getting the word out about the program. “Schools and universities seem to be lacking comprehensive recycling programs,” Miller said.

WDEL
Red Clay parents concerned over negative school environments
“Progress is impossible without change,” said noted Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, and classroom size plays a role. Leaving an issue to fester will not help either.  Parents in Red Clay Consolidated School District told the Board at its monthly meeting Wednesday night they’ve had enough of the District’s inaction. In October, 2015 we reported parents from Skyline Middle School voicing safety concerns to the Board. However, there hasn’t been enough effort done to curb bullying at the school entirely.

Charter School of Wilmington is the best non-private school in Delaware
The U.S. News & World Report issued its list of the Best High Schools in the nation, and Delaware’s best reached into the top 70 schools in the country. According to the list, released Tuesday, April 19, 2016, the Charter School of Wilmington ranked first in Delaware, and 70th nationally. CSW reached the gold standard thanks, in part, to a 5-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio with 970 students and 194 teachers, and an 87.1 percent College Readiness rating, where 91 percent of seniors tested and 86 percent passed the AP exams.

National

Education Week
Scholars: Better gauges needed for ‘mindset,’ ‘grit’
Traditional methods of studying social-emotional skills will have to evolve in more reliable, less subjective ways if educators and policymakers expect to incorporate them validly into accountability systems and school improvement plans, education researchers meeting here last week cautioned. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act broadens the definition of school success, requiring states and districts to include nonacademic factors in their accountability systems.

NPR
9 out of 10 parents think their kids are on grade level. They’re probably wrong
In public radio’s mythical Lake Wobegon, “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” The first two conditions are merely unlikely. The third one is a mathematical absurdity. However, a new survey suggests that almost all parents believe it to be true. In a recent survey of public school parents, 90 percent stated that their children were performing on or above grade level in both math and reading. Parents held fast to this sunny belief no matter their own income, education level, race or ethnicity.

Politico
Regents panel to revisit tough teacher certification system
A panel of education experts and policymakers is about to review how New York certifies its teachers, amid concerns that its tougher and far more expensive new requirements could be discouraging would-be teachers from entering the profession here. Those concerns haven’t galvanized the same kind of grassroots movement as the controversial Common Core learning standards, but experts say they could have a major impact on the state’s future ranks of teachers.

St. Louis Post Dispatch
Missouri education officials replace Common Core standards
Missouri became the latest state to adopt a new set of education benchmarks to replace the national Common Core standards, ditching the benchmarks Tuesday following conservative backlash. The State Board of Education approved new goals for what children from kindergarten through 12th grade should learn not only in math and English, which the Common Core covers, but also social studies and science.

The Chicago Tribune
Want to fix education? Just give a kid a tutor
Commentary by Noah Smith, columnist at Bloomberg View
In 1974, physicist Richard Feynman derided education research as a form of pseudoscience: “I found (pseudoscientific) things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you’ll see the reading scores keep going down. … There’s a witch doctor remedy that doesn’t work. It ought to be looked into: How do they know that their method should work?”