August 5, 2016

Delaware News

Delaware Online
Delawareans want more education funding
Delaware wants more money spent on education and a different system for distributing those funds among schools, according to the results of a statewide poll conducted by the Vision Coalition of Delaware.

NewsWorks
Delawareans split on more education funding
More than half of Delaware’s residents think the state spends too little on education, according to a new study by the Vision Coalition. Fifty-four percent of Delaware residents polled believe the state spent too little on public education. That’s one of the findings of the survey commissioned by the Vision Coalition of Delaware. The group, which was behind the highly touted Vision 2015 education reform plan, held the survey to give candidates running for office this year information about the state’s feelings on education.

Cape Gazette
Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation announces new officers
Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation has elected a new slate of officers for 2016-17. Jeff Gordon is president, Rick Grier-Reynolds is vice president, Bob Harman is treasurer, and Barbara Anderson is secretary.

Dover Post
Polytech environmentalists lauded for mentoring efforts
Polytech students in an environmental program received DNREC’s Outstanding Volunteer Youth Group of the Year. The students were recognized by Gov. Jack Markell and DNREC at the Delaware State Fair July 29.

National News

The Columbian
Groups sue to block new Washington charter schools law
Teachers unions, parents and other groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday over Washington’s new charter school law, a measure that was enacted in the spring after the state Supreme Court struck down the old law. The organizations say the Legislature’s effort to revive charter schools after the 2015 court decision didn’t actually fix the problem cited by the justices: Public dollars needed for traditional public schools are still being diverted to alternative, nonprofit charter schools over which voters have no control, in violation of the Washington Constitution.

EdSurge
“We don’t have resources to keep up with technology”: 2016 Teacher of the Year Jahana Hayes talks to EdSurge
What does it mean, then, for the teaching profession to prepare for 2020? Last week, EdSurge had the opportunity to sit down with Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, to hear about her thoughts on what the profession is missing, why there’s a dearth of minority educators in the field, and how her own district struggles with “antiquated ideas” about social media and the like.

Education Week
What’s keeping women out of science, math careers? Calculus and confidence
It’s well-known there’s a gender gap within science, technology, engineering, and math majors and careers, and a new study traces the moment many women give up on STEM to a single college class: calculus. The study, published in PLOS One last month, found that women are 1.5 times more likely to drop out of the STEM pipeline after Calculus I than men are.

The Hechinger Report
The delusional ways we evaluate English learners: and how to fix it
There certainly are real achievement gaps emerging for some English learners, and we are far from currently educating English learners in utopian, ideal, or even particularly effective ways. But, to pinpoint gaps honestly and target interventions, we have to respect what state data can accurately tell us — not what we wish it could. Fortunately, some states are innovating with new data policies.

The Washington Post
U.S. Education Department issues guidelines for supporting homeless students
With millions of students across the United States set to begin returning to school in coming weeks, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance Wednesday for states and school districts on how to respond to the specific needs of homeless students. The guidelines, provided in response to new provisions in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, emphasize practices aimed at providing stability and safety for the homeless public school population, which included more than 1.3 million students in the 2013-2014 school year.