September 9, 2015

Delaware News

The News Journal
New Delaware school scorecards coming
The Delaware Department of Education is asking for input on new “scorecards” that state officials say will give parents better information about their schools. Some advocates caution that the many factors that make a good school can’t be captured in a single report and warn parents against using the score reports alone to make educational decisions.

Cape Gazette
Sussex Tech opens with smaller freshman class
Sussex Tech is moving forward with fewer students and a slightly smaller administrative staff as the school enters its first year of a three-year state mandate to decrease student enrollment and curtail expenses. In May, legislators approved a bill giving Sussex Tech – Sussex County’s only vocational-technical school – a tax increase over the next two years, after which the amount would return to the previous rate.

Teachers spend a day of learning in Lewes
A dozen teachers spent Aug. 11 learning about the history of Lewes as part of a Lewes Education Coalition sponsored workshop. Teachers took tours and did interactive activities at the Lewes Historical Society Complex, Lightship Overfalls, Zwaanendael Museum and Fort Miles in Cape Henlopen State Park. The day is set aside each year to provide teachers with field trip ideas they can take back to their schools.

WDEL
Christina Board of Education starts redistricting plan
The Christina Board of Education has three weeks to present its proposed redistricting plan to the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission. Board of Education President Harrie Ellen Minnehan has high hopes than any plans for redistricting will be approached with the idea that the focus should be about including everything.

Dover Post
Educators pursue elementary financial literacy
When Bonnie Cohen asked her sixth grade students how many of them talk about money at home, she was excited when everyone raised their hands. But then she asked them what they talked about. “[They’d say] ‘my mother says I can’t have any,’ or ‘my mother says wait till payday,’ or ‘my father says ask your mother,” she said. That wasn’t quite the response the executive director of the Delaware Financial Literacy Institute was looking for.

National News

The Baltimore Sun
Lowery’s legacy
During her three years as state superintendent of schools, Lillian Lowery guided Maryland through a period of rapid and often tumultuous change with a steady hand and a clear-eyed appreciation of the challenges facing educators, parents and students.

Education Week
New Illinois law to prompt changes in discipline policies
Illinois districts are set to rewrite school discipline policies to limit the use of suspensions and expulsions, after Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a sweeping bill championed by student groups. Supporters argued that zero-tolerance policies and overreliance on removing students from the classroom are ineffective and contribute to disproportionately high rates of discipline among students of color.

Associated Press
Schools face incomplete data after Common Core test troubles
Last school year, Common Core-aligned standardized tests marched forward, going from paper-and-pencil to the computer to allow for questions to adapt in difficulty based on a student’s answer. A new baseline of testing data was expected as a result. However, many states had technical issues with the electronic form that left them unable to complete the testing. Others saw an unprecedented spread of refusals. That means a new school year without complete testing data in many areas.

The New York Times
Zuckerberg’s expensive lesson
It’s just hitting bookstores, but Dale Russakoff’s new book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?,” has already become a source of enormous contention, both in Newark, where the story takes place, and among education advocates of various stripes. The plotline revolves around what happened to the Newark school system after Mark Zuckerberg, the young founder and chief executive of Facebook, donated $100 million in 2010 to transform the city’s schools

Hartford Courant
Put off Kindergarten a year? Officials want to end ‘redshirting’
Last school year, one in 12 Connecticut children old enough to attend kindergarten was not enrolled. State officials want to outlaw the practice of “redshirting.”