February 11, 2016

Delaware

Department of Education
Governor hosts first Birth – 8 Summit on early learning
Press Release
More than 300 national and state education experts, practitioners and policymakers came together to celebrate Delaware’s early learning achievements and Illuminate the vision for a birth to third grade approach at the Governor’s Birth to 8 Summit: First 3,000 Days in the First State. “There are only 3,000 days between the time a baby is born and when he or she makes the critical transition from learning to read to reading to learn at the end of third grade – which we know is the best predictor of high school graduation and college and career success,” said Governor Jack Markell, who was joined by Delaware Secretary of Education Steven Godowsky, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development Linda K. Smith, and other national leaders in early learning at the conference.

Education Week
Where are Teachers getting their common core materials?
Blog post by Liana Heitin, assistant editor for Education Week
A new study found that teachers are mainly relying on homegrown instructional materials, created either by themselves or their district colleagues, to meet the Common Core State Standards. But as many as a third of the 4th-8th grade teachers surveyed also said they’ve turned to free online platforms such as EngageNY and LearnZillion to implement the new benchmarks. According to the Harvard study, most teachers surveyed in the five states—Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Nevada —have changed out their materials since the common core went into place.

Middletown Transcript
How does Appoquinimink School District stack up?
Students in the Appoquinimink School District rank second in math and fourth in English language arts in the Smarter Balanced state assessments and have a 95 percent graduation rate – the third highest in the state. Meanwhile, Appoquinimink teachers’ salaries are $1,927 below the state average. Appoquinimink Superintendent Matthew Burrows said, “We recognize that to have highly-qualified people, you have to pay appropriately. Feeling valued is not something that relates solely to a budget line item. Most educators never realize the full value of their contributions to the development of children. But they look to be treated fairly.

NewsWorks
Early childhood education the focus at Delaware conference
Early childhood education practitioners and advocates gathered in Dover Wednesday for the Governor’s Birth to 8 Summit. It was a chance to talk shop, swap best practices, and consult experts. It was also an opportunity for Governor Jack Markell to personally stump for one of his budget priorities. Markell requested $18.2 million for early childhood initiatives in his fiscal year 2017 budget, an $11.3 million increase from what the legislature allotted in fiscal year 2016. No other item in the general fund is slated to receive such a large increase over last year, according to the Governor’s office.

Rodel Blog
Delaware’s progress on improving testing
Blog post by Liz Hoyt, Program Officer at Rodel Foundation of Delaware
Recently, the Center for American Progress published a report called “ESEA Reauthorization: Implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act Toward a Coherent, Aligned Assessment System.” The big idea: The report highlights how ESSA maintains basic testing requirements, but has created an opportunity for states to be flexible in developing stronger testing systems without the pressure of NCLB’s exclusive focus on summative assessments. In short, ESSA is an opportunity to refine testing systems and pursue pilots for innovative assessments.

Smyrna- Clayton Sun-Times
Smyrna school officials say current system is right blend of consolidating expenses and local control
While some legislators and policy groups argue that consolidating school districts would save money, Smyrna School District officials say the state already benefits from consolidation of some resources while individual school districts retain the benefits of local control. “A lot of times when people talk about consolidation, they think about the way schools in other states work, but in Delaware, we’re much different,” said Smyrna School District Finance Director Jerry Gallagher. “There are already economies of scale that Delaware benefits from.” Gallagher said the state provides a student accounting system and a financial system that all districts use.

The Dover Post
Sussex Central student’s tenacity wins national scholarship
Melina Rodriguez refuses to give up. It’s paying off. Her mother passed away in 2010, when she was 11 years old. It was a devastating loss, but she’s managed to move forward. The 17-year-old Sussex Central High School senior is an honor roll student, cheerleader, volunteer, mentor and scientist. Last year she ranked third in her class. She was the driving force behind the resurrection of the science club, which had disbanded. Now she’s rallying students to compete in this year’s Science Olympiad.

The Harrington Journal
Q&A: Get to know the town: LFSD Superintendent Dr. Brenda G. Wynder
Tell us about your career before becoming a superintendent: “I started teaching in New Jersey as a high school math teacher. Then I went to Salisbury where I taught middle school math to eighth graders for six years and was the assistant principal for two years at a middle school. And believe it or not, I spent three years as a principal of an alternative school. Then I came to Delaware as the principal of Lake Forest North Elementary School. I spent two years as the chief academic officer for the district, then tada! So I have k-12 experience as well as alternative and regular.

The Milford Beacon
Milford School District to host community meeting
Milford School District’s first community meeting will be held tonight at 6 in the board room of the old Milford Middle School. The purpose of the meeting is to gather input regarding the future needs of the district, including the future of the old middle school building.

The News Journal
Gov. Markell seeks $11.3 million for early education
Of the more than $4.1 billion Gov. Jack Markell has proposed state government spend next year, it is clear that the $11.3 million he wants for pre-kindergarten education is among the most important to him. The case for early learning is rooted in research that suggests much of the human brain develops before kids are even old enough to enter kindergarten. Children who don’t pick up important skills at those early ages are at a huge disadvantage by the time they start school.

Town Square Delaware
Delaware students blast off with NASA challenge
A representative from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center paid a visit to kids at Gallaher Elementary School in Newark last week. With a little help from the hit movie franchise Transformers, he introduced the students so a special NASA OPTIMUS PRIME contest, which is designed to encourage the students to contemplate careers in aerospace. With the popular Optimus Prime Transformer character as his hook, the credentialed NASA manager didn’t have to do much else to get kids to pay attention!

National

Chalkbeat New York
More schools nationwide are experimenting with diversity programs, report says
As the city faces increasing pressure to promote school diversity, a new report shows that more districts nationwide are using socioeconomic status to shape admissions processes. Ninety-one districts and charter networks now have at least one school that factors socioeconomic status into its assignments, according to a report released Tuesday by the Century Foundation. The number identified by the foundation has more than doubled since 2007 and represents about 4 million students nationwide, the report says.

Forbes
Intersection of learning and fun: Gamification of education
Worldwide, we spend more than 3 billion hours a week playing video and computer games.  Approximately 26 million people harvest their virtual crops on FarmVille every day.  More than 5 million people play an average of 45 hours a week of games, and nearly one-third of high school students play 3 or more hours of video or computer games on an average school day. Given this fascination with games, adapting some of the same principles found in gaming for entertainment to gaming for education- “gamification”- offers tremendous potential to impact teaching and learning.

Huffington Post
Obama wants to get rich and poor kids in the same classroom
After years of inaction on the issue, the Obama administration is taking new steps to help schools achieve socioeconomic diversity.  Included in the president’s proposed 2017 budget is a $120 million competitive grant program to help districts devise and implement plans to get rich and poor children in the same classrooms. The initiative — called Stronger Together — provides funds for five-year projects to districts and groups of districts. The projects should allow schools to explore “ways to foster socioeconomic diversity through a robust process of parental, educator and community engagement, and data analysis,” the proposed budget says.

The Atlantic
Could a state takeover help Chicago’s struggling public schools?
Chicago’s public schools are in trouble. Nearly $6 billion in debt, the district staved off immediate financial collapse this month only by selling $725 million in bonds to Wall Street at an unusually high interest rate. Meanwhile, thousands of protesters organized by the Chicago Teachers Union clogged streets in the Loop during the evening rush hour last week, demanding higher salaries, greater contributions to pension and health-care plans, and a cap on charter schools. Chicago Public Schools is the third largest district in the nation. In response to this crisis, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner proposed a rather extreme remedy: a state takeover of the city’s public schools.

The Hechinger Report
How the Department of Defense schools are teaching their version of Common Core math
Standing in front of a smartboard, 5-year-old Kaleb Eckerfield touches an icon of a storm cloud with raindrops. He drags it with his finger to the empty space under the day’s date, creating an instant weather report. “What do we know about how many sunny and rainy days we’ve had this month?” asks Andrea Todd, the teacher of Kaleb’s kindergarten class at Hampton Primary School, one of the nine schools located on the Fort Bragg Army Post in North Carolina. “They’re equal,” Kaleb says, pointing to the illustrations. “One, two. Two of each.” The next task awaits: a math problem requiring him to add up a string of six black dots, and then subtract two more dots from that total.