March 4, 2016
Delaware
Cape Gazette
Lewes resident files for at-large school board seat
Lewes resident Heather Ingerski filed March 2 for the at-large seat on Cape Henlopen school board. Ingerski is the president of Shields Elementary Parent Teacher Organization. She and her husband, Michael, have three children – a sixth-grader at Beacon Middle School, a fourth-grader at Shields Elementary and a 4-year-old. With children attending Cape schools, Ingerski said she decided it is a good time to get involved and run for school board.
Coastal Point
Carper celebrates school wellness centers with IRHS visit
Besides the classrooms and gymnasiums, most Delaware high schools have the equivalent of a regular doctor’s office. Wellness centers became widespread in Delaware about 20 years ago, under now-U.S. Sen. Tom Carper’s governorship. So Carper toured Indian River High School’s wellness center and met with health staff from across the state on Feb. 17, during National School-Based Health Care Awareness Month.
Delaware 105.9
Three IRSD teachers honored with STEM educator awards
Governor Markell visits two Indian River School District schools to honor three STEM Educator Award winners. Markell first visited Sussex Central High School where the first and second place High School STEM Award winners Robert Gibson and Jeffrey Kilner teach, then he stopped by Georgetown Elementary School to visit Assistant Principal Travis Bower, who was the first place Middle School STEM Educator Award winner for his work as a STEM teacher at Selbyville Middle School last year.
Newsworks
Lincoln University, Delaware State buck trend to grow
Since the Great Recession ended, college enrollments have been growing overall, but steadily declining at historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs. Two local HBCUs, Lincoln University and Delaware State University are bucking that trend. Jamar Earnest wanted to attend an HBCU, but there are no historically black colleges on the West Coast. The California senior chose Lincoln in Chester County. Out-of-state students like Earnest are one reason Lincoln’s numbers are growing.
Rodel Blog
Strength in numbers at early childhood conference
Blog post by Michelle Wilson, kindergarten teacher at Booker T. Washington Elementary School
As co-chair of the Birth–Grade 3 Alignment Committee under the Delaware Early Childhood Council, I had a unique experience of helping facilitate the Stronger Together Conference that was held last December at Dover Downs. The purpose of this conference was to bring together preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teachers, along with administrators, to open up the dialogue and ease those student transitions from birth to age five and the K-12 system.
Sussex County Post
Georgetown Middle School hosting ‘Run for Color’
Georgetown Middle School will hold its second annual Run for Color 5K Run/Walk Saturday, April 9 on and around the school grounds. This family friendly event provides a colorful venue for fun and exercising. The run will benefit the Georgetown Middle School track team and programs to promote healthy students at GMS. The Run for Color is Georgetown Middle’s own version of the popular color runs being held throughout the country.
The Dover Post
Capital school accountability survey draws few parents
The statewide 5Essentials survey, a reflection of public opinion about each school’s performance, ends March 18. Capital School District Assessment and School Improvement Specialist LaWanda Burgoyne is encouraging people to fill it out. “We will not only get a snapshot of each school,” she said. “But we will be able to drill down to into specific questions students were asked and how they responded.”
The Harrington Journal
Competition serves up ‘ProStart’ for Lake Forest students
A candle, carefully placed inside a decadent chocolate strawberry torte, flickered in the warmly lit Bonz restaurant Tuesday, Feb. 23. Dolores Thomas began her birthday celebration a day early this year thanks to her granddaughter Janaie Thomas and three other Lake Forest High School students enrolled in the foods and nutrition pathway. The four students cooked up a gourmet, three- course meal for Lake Forest School District officials, family members and others including Representative Jack Peterman and Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce President Judy Diogo in preparation for the statewide Pro-Start competition held Tuesday, March 1.
Town Square Delaware
Who is responsible for our school?
You are not alone if you are a bit confused by the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission’s (WEIC) redistricting proposal and its tortuous consideration by the State School Board of Education. The convoluted haggling (“may” vs. “shall”?) between two panels appointed by the same governor neatly illustrates factors that have long bedeviled our public schools and attempts to transform them: complex semi-measures instead of comprehensive reform, excessive bureaucracy, and an overall lack of political accountability.
National
Education Source
Debate emerges over state actions needed to ease teacher shortages
As California school districts grapple with a widening shortage of teachers, a policy debate has emerged about just how actively the state should be involved in trying to remedy the problem. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report last month that makes the case that market forces will help alleviate the difficulties districts are experiencing in filling certain positions, and that the shortage “will decrease without direct state action.”
Education Week
Innovation in practice: Transforming classroom culture in a 1-to-1 model
Blog post by Beth Holland, instructor and communications coordinator at EdTech Teacher
Sometimes, I have a unique opportunity to engage in conversations with educators from across the country, and this is no exception. For the past several years, I have benefitted from learning alongside Ann and her colleagues in Bellevue, Nebraska. Truth be told, I cyberstalked their very first professional development week in the summer of 2013. Stuck at home with a broken leg, I joined in via Twitter for their inaugural #iPadAcademy professional development event.
The Atlantic
Big plans for toddlers in San Antonio
When rumored vice-presidential contender Julian Castro was still mayor of San Antonio in 2011, he asked its 1.4 million residents to think about what they wanted to see in their city in 2020. The question was both imaginative and practical, but the effort to get it answered was monumental. In two rounds of city-wide open forums—some with attendance numbering in the hundreds—residents came together at community centers, schools, and other venues to discuss issues like education, parks and recreation, transportation, workforce development, and other matters inherent to the needs of a growing city.
The Los Angeles Times
How this Bay Area charter school network is reinventing education
Diane Tavenner scanned the list of names a staffer at Summit Preparatory Charter High School had just handed her. She began to cry. They weren’t happy tears. Where many would see signs of success, Tavenner saw failure. “I taught those kids,” Tavenner said of that moment in 2011. “I was their principal, I was their mentor. I knew everybody personally — and their families.” Tavenner had founded the award-winning Silicon Valley school in 2003. With its nontraditional approach to teaching, it quickly grew into a network of seven privately run, publicly funded charter schools across the Bay Area.
The Washington Post
As SAT enters a new era this week, students say the exam has improved
The SAT’s infamous guessing penalty is gone. Its vocabulary is less arcane, minus words like “lachrymose” and “obsequious” that students tended to memorize and then forget. Its essay is now optional. The perfect score — set in 2005 at 2400 — is reverting to the iconic standard from generations past: 1600. But perhaps the most important change to the retooled college admission test that debuts this week for hundreds of thousands of students nationwide lies in its approach to what they learn in high school.