February 4, 2016
Delaware
Cape Gazette
Nancy Targett takes new post at University of New Hampshire
Nancy Targett, acting president of the University of Delaware, has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Hampshire. (UNH). Her appointment, effective Sept. 1, was announced January 26 by UNH President Mark Huddleston. As UNH’s senior academic administrator, Targett will be responsible for the university’s academic priorities and the allocation of resources to support them. She will be working closely with academic deans, department heads, student services professionals, faculty and staff.
Delaware Tech kicks off 50th anniversary
Delaware Technical Community College kicked off its 50th anniversary celebration Jan. 27 with the theme Delivering Excellence, Changing Lives. The events, held simultaneously at all four campus locations, included a commemorative anniversary video that showcases the college’s history and accomplishments, an anniversary website, a campus scavenger hunt and refreshments. The celebration – attended by college students, faculty, staff, administrators, retirees, graduates, board of trustee members and development council members – served as the official launch of the college’s yearlong celebration.
CNN Money
Navient Foundation gives $15,000 grant to help at-risk University of Delaware students succeed
With spring semester beginning at University of Delaware, students are back to class preparing for the future day when they will receive their diplomas. To help make graduation a reality, Navient Foundation, the company-sponsored philanthropic fund, announced a $15,000 grant to University of Delaware’s NUCLEUS Program to support low-income and first-generation students. The grant will help the undergraduate support program ensure the academic success, retention and graduation of participating at-risk students through providing comprehensive academic services, connections, opportunities and information.
Rodel Blog
February teacher newsletter: National fellowship ppportunity, and PD for teachers by teachers
Personalized Learning Workshop: Connecting Innovative Educators (Feb. 27, Middletown). Hosted by the Rodel Teacher Council, the Personalized Learning Workshop will take place Saturday, Feb. 27, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., at St. Georges High School in Middletown, DE. A workshop for teachers, by teachers, attendees will learn innovative strategies to personalize instruction and connect with others. Teachers can earn three professional development clock hours.
The Milford Beacon
Dover High uses grant to give ESL students a leg up
Monica Sermeno’s schedule is different than your typical student. She takes science, math and history classes like every other student at Dover High School. She eats the same food, goes to the same assemblies, and will walk across the same stage at graduation. But there’s a slight difference—she doesn’t speak fluent English. So she has to take extra ESL (English as a second language) classes to help her catch up. The 17-year-old sophomore, who moved to the United States from El Salvador a year ago, said learning English hasn’t been easy.
Town Square Delaware
Preparing for the redesigned SAT
The long-anticipated redesigned SAT is almost here, and if your high school student is planning to take this exam for the first time this spring, he or she will definitely be impacted. The redesigned SAT is focused on the skills, knowledge and understandings that predict student success in college and the workforce. Following is a high-level view of what to expect from the redesigned SAT, which debuts in March 2016.
National
Chicago Sun-Times
Teachers call CPS’ $100 million in cuts ‘act of war’
Chicago Public Schools on Tuesday announced plans to cut $100 million in spending and staff, a move leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union said was an attempt to bully teachers after the union rejected a contract offer. Union leaders said the school district’s move was “the latest act of war” in contract negotiations that have dragged on for 14 months, one that could see 1,000 teachers laid off and ratchet up tensions with union members that last year overwhelmingly supported a strike.
Syracuse.com
NY’s top education official wedged between opt-outs, ‘strongly –worded’ letter from feds
MaryEllen Elia, tapped seven months ago to lead New York’s education department, now finds herself wedged between a federal mandate to test students and a groundswell of parents in this state who refuse to let their kids take the tests. Elia, along with other heads of state education departments that saw a high number of “opt-outs” last spring, received a letter in December from the federal education department.
The Atlantic
Obama’s controversial higher –ed legacy
Recently, a great deal of debate has centered on whether the nation’s first black president has failed its historically black colleges and universities. The debate isn’t new; for years there’s been whispered angst over the president’s paternalism and seeming aloofness when it came to black institutions—and perhaps black issues in general. The disappointment has grown despite his proficiency with code switching between handshakes and daps and inviting rappers to the White House and singing gospel hymns and R&B classics in public.
The Hechinger Report
Ready for day one? Maybe not: What two new reports show about teacher preparation
Opinion by Ashley Libetti Mitchel, senior education analyst at Bellwether Education partners
Is it possible to ensure that all teachers are effective from the first day they walk into the classroom to work? Teacher quality policies assume that it is. But what if it isn’t? That’s the question Chad Aldeman and I explore in two new reports, published earlier this week by Bellwether Education Partners. Decades of education-reform efforts focused on trying to improve the quality of teacher preparation to increase the effectiveness of first-year teachers.
The Washington Post
GOP-led states increasingly taking control from local school boards
Republican lawmakers in Illinois last month pitched a bold plan for the state to seize control of the Chicago public schools, becoming one of a growing number of states that are moving to sideline local officials — even dissolve locally elected school boards — and take over struggling urban schools. Governors in Michigan, Arkansas, Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio and elsewhere — mostly Republican leaders who otherwise champion local control in their fights with the federal government — say they are intervening in cases of chronic academic or financial failure.