November 16, 2015
Delaware News
The News Journal
Schools urge students to take part in College Application Month
Oct. 19 through Nov. 20 is this year’s College Application Month, and every school in the state is taking steps to encourage kids to apply. Seniors are spending time in computer labs during the school day filling out admission applications, working toward financial aid, and crafting essays. During this period, all of Delaware’s colleges, private and public, have waived their application fees.
John Carney charts familiar course in governor run
There are critical questions about how Carney would govern in 2016, a time of waning tax collections and exploding costs in health care and public education that are forcing difficult budget discussions in Dover.
Forum shows human toll of the poverty-prison connection
Keith James, a 20-year-old Wilmington University student and founder of the community organization Voices for Voiceless, asked those in the packed hall at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington to stand if they were under age 25. As about two dozen young adults stood, James said ending the troubling relationship between poverty and prison starts with empowering youth and helping them overcome adversity. That means the state shouldn’t spend about $12,000 annually to educate a student and $30,000 annually to house an inmate, he said.
UDaily
School of Education colloquium to consider Wilmington education report
The University of Delaware School of Education colloquium series will mark American Education Week with a presentation titled “Strengthening Wilmington Education: An Action Agenda” at 1:15 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 18 by Tony Allen, chairperson of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission (WEIC).
Delaware State News
Booker T. Washington opened in 1922
Pierre S. du Pont, president of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. from 1915 to 1919, personally financed the construction of two black high schools and 86 black elementary schools. A school in Dover was one of them. Booker T. first opened in the fall of 1922 as an all-black school, consolidating two existing all black schools in Dover — one on Division Street and one on Slaughter Street. The new school’s student body would be more than 200 — larger than any other black school in Delaware.
Booker T. Washington builds on history
The renovated space will accommodate the growing student population in the autism program and the community school — both are facing overcrowding in their current classrooms — and serve the unique needs of the students in the programs. Although Booker T.’s renovation came along later than many hoped, the good news is it soon will be back in use by students and will appear more like the original building than it has for years.
Cape Gazette
Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation announces fall grants
Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation recently announced grants totaling $21,703 in two categories: Teacher Grants ($8,068) and Excellence Grants ($13,635). The grants are a central focus of CHEF’s efforts to provide financial support for classroom and extracurricular resources, projects and programs in the Cape Henlopen School District.
National News
The Washington Post
Ms. Clinton backpedals on charters and children
Hillary Clinton has had a decades-long interest in education in which she has not shied from disagreeing with the teachers unions that are a core constituency of the Democratic Party. So when her presidential candidacy won unexpectedly early endorsements from the two major education unions, the question arose of whether she would stand her ground. If her recent comments on charter schools are any indication, the answer is: not so much.
Education Week
Lawmakers announce preliminary agreement On ESEA rewrite
It’s official: Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., and Bobby Scott, D-Va., on Friday announced that they have a framework for moving forward on a long-stalled rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The next step: a conference committee, which could kick off in coming days. The goal is to pass a bill to revise the ESEA—the current version of which is the No Child Left Behind Act—for the first time in 15 years, by the end of 2015.
Associated Press
Zuckerberg talks success, lessons learned in Newark schools
Five years after donating $100 million to remake education in Newark, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says he’s using lessons learned about the need for community involvement in his next effort in California. He also highlighted some successes in New Jersey’s largest city. In a Facebook post Friday, Zuckerberg acknowledged increased graduation rates in Newark and successful charter schools, but also noted the “challenges, mistakes and honest differences among people with good intentions.”
The New York Times
In Swan Song, Arne Duncan extols school progress under his tenure
With the Obama administration’s signature school reform program coming to an end and battered by politics, the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, came to a once-failing high school in one of this city’s most troubled neighborhoods on Thursday to highlight the progress that has been made here and across the country.