August 21, 2017

Delaware News

Delaware Public Media
Homeless kids learn resiliency through Highmark grant
Hundreds of low-income children in Wilmington have better coping skills thanks in part to a grant from Highmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield Delaware. The Ministry of Caring has three childcare centers in Wilmington for kids between the ages of six weeks and five years old. Lauren McLoughlin with Ministry of Caring said the grant funded a program focused teaching resiliency to homeless or recently homeless children.

Delaware State News
New teachers union chief known for speaking out
Mike Matthews is not afraid to make waves. Now, as president of one of the most powerful groups in Legislative Hall he’s got a chance to influence policy. Mr. Matthews, who took the reins as head of the Delaware State Education Association — the teachers union — in July, represents about 13,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, custodians, secretaries, bus drivers and others throughout the state’s 200-plus schools.

Progress report: Two years into CR school district referendum projects
In 2015, Caesar Rodney School District passed its $27.8 million referendum to help with operation and improvement costs. This October, it’ll be officially two years since the measure passed a vote with 1,935 district residents for and 1,171 against.

Newsworks
Wilmington student uses science to empower her peers
The new school year is fast approaching and a local student is determined to get her peers excited about heading back to the classroom. Jacqueline Means, a 10th grader at Delaware Military Academy, used a few science projects to draw the attention of at least 30 students earlier this week at the Girls Empowerment Stem program.

Red Clay forms equity panel to address racial disparities
Cognizant of longstanding low academic performance by black and Latino students in comparison to white and Asian students, along with other disparities, Red Clay Consolidated School District has created a committee to review and change “practices related to racial equity.” The so-called Equity Committee was approved this week without dissent during Red Clay’s monthly board meeting after several speakers spoke of huge gaps in proficiency, discipline, hiring, and other areas.

Rodel Blog
NPR on social and emotional skills: Everybody loves them, but we still can’t define them
Blog post by Shyanne Miller, policy associate at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
The language around building non-cognitive, non-academic skills in students—what we at Rodel call social and emotional learning—continues to be under debate, according to NPR columnist Anya Kamenetz in her recent article,  “Social and Emotional Skills: Everybody Loves them, But Still Can’t Define Them.”

The News Journal
With summer vacation winding down, education camp preps kids for school
At St. Edmond’s Academy, elementary and middle school students were enthusiastic about learning weeks before the academic school year was set to begin. Over the course of a week, the school’s academic summer boot camp left more than 40 students feeling a bit more prepared for school as a result of intensive training on reading, writing and studying.

UDaily
IES grant expands literacy research in Delaware schools
Over the past three years, Joshua Wilson, assistant professor in the University of Delaware’s School of Education, has studied if teachers can use computer software to motivate their students and improve their writing. Teachers and students alike responded enthusiastically, with students asking their teachers “Can we write during recess?” Wilson’s work studies the use of Project Essay Grade Writing (PEG Writing) software in the teaching and learning of elementary and middle school students.

On August 14, we included an article from The Heartland Institute that contained false information. The article stated lawmakers abolished the Delaware State Board of Education. The Delaware State Board Education is still an active organization and the State Board’s website includes information about their current work and future meetings.

National News

NPR
Do laptops help learning? A look at the only statewide school laptop program
It was the year 2000 and Maine’s governor at the time, Angus King, was excited about the Internet. The World Wide Web was still relatively young but King wanted every student in the state to have access to it. “Go into history class and the teacher says, ‘Open your computer. We’re going to go to rome.com and we’re going to watch an archaeologist explore the Catacombs this morning in real time.’

Philly.com
Summer literacy program enlists parents as partners in a child’s education
Opinion by Chris Satullo is a former Inquirer editor
Alejandro Gac-Artigas thinks America’s public schools have been squandering a potent resource. He’s the young founder of the Springboard Collaborative, which runs a promising summer reading program in Philadelphia and other cities. What, in his view, is that underused asset? A parent’s love. “A child’s education involves much more than just their schooling,” Gac-Artigas says.

The Hechinger Report
Cramming for kindergarten
When they arrived, many of the soon-to-be kindergarteners in Miami Elementary School’s summer preschool program could not spell their names or grip a pencil. They hadn’t learned to line up silently or raise their hands. At lunch, a few tried slurping their applesauce through straws. Many working-class families in this manufacturing city across the Wabash River from Purdue University cannot afford to send their children to private pre-kindergarten, nor can they rely on government-funded programs — like Head Start and subsidized childcare — which serve a fraction of eligible children.

The New York Times
City will move sidelined teachers from limbo to classrooms
For a dozen years, hundreds of New York City teachers have been paid despite not having permanent jobs, sidelined in most cases because of disciplinary problems or bad teaching records or because they had worked in poorly performing schools that were closed or where enrollment declined. This limbo was largely the result of a deal that the Bloomberg administration struck with the teachers’ union to give principals more control over who worked in their schools.

WOSU
Data from Ohio shows poverty’s impact on education
Sixty percent of Ohio public school students living in poverty scored below proficient on required statewide tests, and the districts that have the lowest test scores have the highest percentages of poor students. That’s based on data from the Ohio Department of Education, and lawmakers are now studying the connection between education and poverty.