May 9, 2016

Delaware

Cape Gazette
Cape to select Teacher of the Year
Eight Cape Henlopen School District teachers are vying for a chance to represent the district as Cape’s 2016 Teacher of the Year. District officials will announce this year’s winner during a ceremony Wednesday, May 11. The winner will represent Cape Henlopen School District in the state Teacher of the Year ceremony held in September.  Here are the nominees in alphabetical order.

Delaware State News
Polytech junior in a poetry class by herself
Polytech High School junior Hannah Sturgis has turned her love of poetry into a special distinction. At the national Poetry Out Loud competition in Washington last week, Hannah went deeper into the poem recitation contest than any Delaware student has, as she was eliminated in the semifinal round. She competed with the 19th century poem “Infelix” by Adah Isaacs Menken. “I’ve always loved poetry, probably since elementary school and have since gotten into Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare — all of the greats,” the Smyrna resident said following the competition in Washington.

Newark Post
School board candidates face off in forum
With the school board election set for Tuesday, community members packed into the Downes Elementary School library on Tuesday night to hear from the three candidates running for Christina School District Board of Education seats. Desiree Brady, a Boys & Girls Club staff member, is challenging incumbent Elizabeth Paige, a digital marketing and social media consultant for W.L. Gore and Associates, for the District F seat on the board. In the District B race, Meg Mason, a former district principal, is running unopposed after two-term board member David Resler withdrew his candidacy last month.

Rodel Blog
The path forward on pathways: What we heard
Blog post by Jenna Bucsak, program officer at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
Readers of this blog might recall the Rodel Foundation and the United Way of Delaware recently co-hosted a community conversation about Delaware Pathways and its still-under-development strategic plan. The event was a resounding success. From the Wilmington Public Library, community members and leaders from various nonprofit organizations weighed in on the present state of college and career readiness for Delaware students—and where they’d like to see it go in the future. Here’s just a small sample of the feedback we heard.

The News Journal
Bill aims to cut number of out-of-school suspensions
A bill introduced this week is aiming to keep Delaware students in the classroom by reducing out-of-school suspensions for minor infractions such as being late to class, disrespecting a teacher or dress code violations. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, D-Wilmington East, would require schools to use shorter in-school suspensions, counseling, parent-teacher conferences, tutoring and other restorative justice practices as the default for handling behavioral problems.

Young scientists at Appo explore stratosphere
A few years back, Robert Ferrell, an eighth grade science teacher at Louis Redding Middle School in Middletown, read about  a seventh grader in California who launched a weather balloon to learn more about the stratosphere. It didn’t take long for Ferrell to embrace the idea and bring it to the students at his school. “I said ‘well that’s middle school. I teach middle school. That’s a great idea,'” he said. So with the help of grants from the school district and the parent teacher organization he launched the Stratosphere Project.

National

NPR
Take a ride on Oregon’s school funding roller coaster
In the early 1990s, voters in Oregon were feeling some tax anxiety. Property values were rising, and many worried that also meant a rise in property taxes. And so, with something called Measure 5, they capped them. Since schools depend heavily on property taxes, Oregon did something unique. The state decided to use income tax revenue to help offset the effect of this new property-tax cap. There’s just one problem: In tough economic times, income is more volatile than property values. And so began a roller coaster for Oregon’s schools.

Real Clear Education
Do tests improve learning? Poor families think so — more than wealthier ones
The much-maligned student testing could actually reveal social disparities and potentially unite diverse communities, according to a new report. Major gaps exist in how low-income versus middle- and high-income communities view student testing, according to a report released today by Northwest Evaluation Association and Gallup. NWEA and Gallup’s data show that low-income parents think state tests improve learning despite the opt-out movement, and the movement itself isn’t necessarily moving the needle at the school and district level.

St. Louis Post – Dispatch
Taking housing, education equity beyond the school doors
When they founded the school, organizers of City Garden Montessori had the goal of improving educational opportunity in a neighborhood where the only public schools were struggling. Now they are going a step further, by organizing a broad coalition to tackle a bigger problem: racial and economic segregation in schools and housing. “The inequity that exists in our region is literally killing our children and killing our communities,” said Christie Huck, executive director of City Garden. She spoke to about 70 individuals gathered Friday at the charter school to better understand the problem before them: neighborhoods and schools that are segregated by race and economics.

The Advocate
Louisiana Senate committee advances bill revising teacher evaluations
A heavily negotiated bill backed by Gov. John Bel Edwards that would tweak the way public schoolteachers are evaluated won easy approval Thursday in the Louisiana Senate Education Committee. The measure, Senate Bill 342, passed without objection and next faces action in the full Senate. The legislation is the result of numerous closed-door meetings among teacher unions, superintendents, the Louisiana School Boards Association and advocates of major changes in public schools, including the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the Council for a Better Louisiana and Stand For Children.

The Hechinger Report
High failure rates spur universities to overhaul math class
When Chelsea Castilloadame left the Navy Medical Corps after five years to pursue her longtime plan of becoming a doctor, she knew her transition back to civilian life was going to be tough. But she wasn’t prepared to feel so unprepared for — of all things — math class. “I would leave classes and exams literally in tears,” Castilloadame, 24, said. “I went to the bathroom and I cried after almost every math exam. It was very humbling to go into the professor and say, ‘I am so frustrated. I’m bawling my eyes out and I know this material.’ ”