December 7, 2015

Delaware

Associated Press
CNN honors Delaware teen who started literacy program
A Delaware teenager who started a literacy campaign that brings men into schools to read to children is among those honored as heroes by cable news network CNN. The network is honoring 14-year-old Imani Henry of Wilmington as a Young Wonder as part of its annual CNN Heroes tribute recognizing those who have distinguished themselves by helping others.

Delaware State News
Youth Advisory Committee focuses on Dover New Year’s Eve event
The Youth Advisory Committee continues to remain confident about its upcoming New Year’s Eve event in Dover. The Youth Advisory Committee consists of nine members and meets once a month. It allows teens ages 14 to 18 a chance to speak on issues that affect them, as well as develop leadership skills for the future.

Hockessin Community News
Students at AI DuPont can ‘earn while you learn’
An innovative program at AI DuPont High School is combining earning with learning to give students an advantage in the working world. Last month, the school expanded its ongoing partnership with Pennsylvania based Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union to open up a student-operated branch of the financial institution at AI DuPont.

Philadelphia Business Journal
UDel’s new president: How he could change the university
Dennis Assanis’ vision for the University of Delaware includes an upgrade of the learning process. The incoming president of the First State’s biggest school wants to establish more industry partnerships to get more students educated outside the classroom, while integrating digital methods to better accommodate students’ individual learning preferences inside the classroom.

The News Journal
Charters, districts combine for expo
Delaware parents, especially those in New Castle County, have many options for where to send their children to school. But how are they supposed to pick if they don’t know what all those options are? On Saturday, 20 charter schools, all four traditional school districts in the Wilmington area and the county vo-tech district jointly held a Public School Choice expo in the Hercules Building in downtown Wilmington.

Scholastic to expand free book program to Wilmington
A division of children’s book publisher Scholastic Inc., has expanded its program distributing books to low-income students to Wilmington. The program, dubbed My Very Own Library, allows children who may not own books to choose the books they want to read from school book fairs for free. Starting in December, kids will choose three books from a book fair and again in February June. By the end of the school year, each child will own 10 new books.

Reading really is fundamental…for the future of our state
Opinion by Michelle A. Taylor, the President & CEO of United Way of Delaware
While we can debate the many reasons why so many kids are being left behind in Delaware, the simple truth is that they need our help now. UWD is dedicated to ensuring that all Delaware children are reading on grade level by third grade. Once example of UWD’s efforts to support state-wide literacy efforts is the roll-out of the “My Very Own Library” (MVOL) reading initiative program.

Calls grow for fundamental change to school funding
Delaware taxpayers pour billions of dollars into public education each year, and the sum is always growing. Yet the core of the state’s school funding system has gone largely unchanged since the 1940s, even as the state went through seismic demographic and social shifts.

Delaware’s long road to ratification of the 13th Amendment
Clearly, Delaware’s delay in officially supporting the Civil War era amendments is more than a symbolic footnote. For Delaware took measures against blacks that are still reverberating, including legitimizing a segregated education in its constitution and practicing a plethora of discriminatory policies. Delaware citizens were part of the contingent who filed the suit in the epic Brown v. Board case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled separate educational facilities unconstitutional. Due to its intransigence in following federal policy on desegregated education, Delaware became the only state to employ inter-district busing.

Town Square Delaware
Q&A: Wilmington coding school founder takes pride in first year’s success
When the first class of ZipCode Wilmington students graduates today from Delaware’s only computer coding school, all of them will start work at new jobs on Monday. With virtually all 17 participants doubling their take-home salaries since enrolling in the intense 12-week program, the students are incredibly grateful they were selected for the inaugural instructional program, which in large part is paid for by their future employers.

Sussex County Post
Do you see what I see? Kindergarteners’ sight the Lions’ focus
One of the most important service projects of the Millsboro Lions is eye screening of kindergarten children at the elementary schools in Millsboro and Long Neck. This year, over 275 children were checked to help ensure they see well enough to learn in school.

WMDT
Delaware focuses on early childhood education
The achievement gap in childhood education starts way before your child even walks into a classroom. Kids from lower income families typically hear 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers by the age of 3, according to research from the University of Kansas. That’s why Saturday in Dover, Delaware put the focus on early childhood education.

National News

Boston Globe
Standardized testing works, depending on where you go to school
The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, or NCLB, installed high-stakes standardized tests as national education policy. It also kicked off a heated debate about how best to regulate public schools. Advocates of the tests, who until lately included Barack Obama, say they are the only way to ensure all schools provide a good education. Critics say they deform the educational process and do more harm than good.

NPR
How a school’s attendance number hides big problems
Every morning, the familiar routine plays out in hundreds of thousands of classrooms: A teacher looks out over the desks, taking note of who’s in their seats and who isn’t. On any given day, maybe there are one or two empty chairs. One here, one there. And that all goes into the school’s daily attendance rate. But here’s what that morning ritual doesn’t show: That empty desk? It might be the same one that was empty last week, or two weeks ago. The desk of a student who’s racked up five, 10, 20 absences this year.

Public Radio International
Teaching teachers to better connect with their immigrant students
One of the aspects of teaching that I have most enjoyed over the past decade is working with students from around the world. While spending the day teaching large groups of children can be sometimes stressful and even isolating, sharing the experiences and cultural knowledge of immigrant students from Australia, Cambodia, Ireland, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (just to name a few countries) has expanded the world view of everyone working and studying in our schools.

The Hechinger Report
Education myth: American students are over-tested
“I listened to several presentations. You got this impression, if they would only get rid of tests, everything would improve,” said Schleicher, who overseas the education and skills directorate at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “That certainly isn’t the bottleneck for improvement. The U.S. is not a country of heavy testing. That last statement would shock many parents and activists who believe the opposite. But according to Schleicher’s reading of the data from more than 70 countries, most nations give their students more standardized tests than the United States does.

The News & Observer
Struggling schools could get flexibility reserved for charters
Local school districts in North Carolina may be able to make some of their struggling schools look more like charters under a policy the state Board of Education is considering. The policy would lay out steps for implementing a law passed about five years ago, when the state was applying for a large federal grant called Race to the Top. The law describes changes the lowest-performing schools can make in order to improve. One of the options allows struggling schools to operate more like charters.