April 1, 2016

Delaware

Coastal Point
Sussex Central is leading county to mock trial greatness
Sussex Central High School has proven that public schools can lead the state in a prestigious academic competition. This year, SCHS won second place in the 2016 Delaware State Mock Trial Competition. That’s the highest a Sussex County team has ever advanced in the competition’s 25-year history. Mock trial puts students in a real courtroom to argue either side of a fictional, but realistic, case.

Rodel Blog
More strides forward on pathways
Blog post by Jenna Bucsak, Program Officer at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
This week, the Delaware Department of Education announced it had secured a $100,000 grant to develop a detailed career readiness action plan—an essential step to expanding economic opportunity for young people across the First State. The grant, which also went to 23 other states and the District of Columbia, was secured through phase one of New Skills for Youth grant opportunity.

Sussex County Post
Indian River High’s JROTC in jeopardy of losing stripes; enrollment below Marine Corps requirement
Indian River High School’s Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps is in jeopardy of possibly losing its JROTC stripes. An upcoming Marine Corps’ school visit and a time extension request may weigh heavily in determining the fate of the school’s program that has historically been below U.S. Marine Corps ROTC enrollment requirements.

The Milford Beacon
Delaware wins $100,000 to improve career preparation
The Delaware Department of Education recently received a $100,000 grant to develop a career readiness action plan. Delaware is among 24 states and the District of Columbia that secured grants through phase one of New Skills for Youth. The grants are one piece of a $75 million, five-year initiative developed by JPMorgan Chase, the Council of Chief State School Officers and Advance CTE.

Town Square Delaware
UD basketball team pumps up ‘March Reading Madness’
Kids at Gallaher Elementary School couldn’t wait to high-five the UD basketball players who visited their school earlier this month. Marvin King-Davis, Barnett Harris and Mo Jeffers play for the UD men’s basketball team, and they visited Gallaher to give the kids a March Reading Madness pep talk.

National

The Atlantic
Where are the kidcasts?
The guilt of a parent who puts the television on to pacify their children is one of the most powerful emotional forces in existence,” lamented Gimlet’s Matt Lieber in a recent panel on podcasting. An audience member had just asked if the industry was planning on “growing the audience younger”—did the panelists (all audio specialists) think kids would even engage with podcasts? “A podcast aimed at 3-10-year-olds that parents could actually tolerate—if you could do it right—would be an unbelievable hit,” Lieber replied.

The Brookings Institute
Student data privacy and education research must be balanced
Blog post by Michael Hansen, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Brown Center on Education Policy
Last week, the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on data privacy protections for students. At issue is whether and how Congress will update the decades-old Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, commonly known as FERPA, for use in the modern age where big data is king. It’s a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records, and which governs the state and local education agencies that collect and maintain data on their students.

The Columbus Dispatch
Drop in education majors sends Ohio schools scrambling for teachers
The number of newly awarded bachelor’s degrees in education has dropped by more than one-fourth in Ohio since the 2003-04 school year, challenging the state’s reputation as a fount of new teachers. Given the historical surplus, that might be OK, except that the prospective new teachers aren’t seeking degrees in the specialties in which they’re needed most. That leaves school districts scrambling for teachers each year, especially in middle and high school math and science, plus foreign languages, physical education and other areas.

The Texas Tribune
The price of admission
One school has a planetarium, indoor tennis courts and a parking garage. At the other, hallways were missing ceiling tiles for the first few months of school. One offers an SAT course over the summer, and the average student’s score is 1217 out of 1600. At the other, classes share copies of SAT prep books. The average score there is 825. The two Dallas-area schools — Highland Park High School and Bryan Adams High School — are only 10 miles apart, but they might as well be in different countries.

The Washington Post
Chicago teachers to strike Friday, shutting down nation’s third-largest school system
Thousands of Chicago teachers are expected to walk off the job Friday, a one-day strike that union leaders describe as an effort to pressure state lawmakers to address the dire financial outlook of the city’s public schools and colleges. The move by the Chicago Teachers Union comes amid stalled contract negotiations and means that the city’s nearly 400,000 students will miss class, throwing their families’ daily routines into disarray.