April 18, 2016

Delaware

Cape Gazette
Two Cape groups earn Jefferson Awards
Students from the Cape Henlopen High School’s JROTC and Green Club were recognized by Mayor Ted Becker for outstanding service to the community as part of the Jefferson Awards LEAD360 Challenge. The challenge offers a platform for youth to realize their vision, act as the megaphone for their voice and empower children and the country to act and have impact. Launched in 2010, the challenge has recognized more than 5,900 Delaware youths in 474 service projects in collaboration with seven Delaware mayors.

Coastal Point
IRSD plans to build three new schools and more
The Indian River School District has changed its wish list into a to-do list. The IRSD Board of Education voted on April 7 to begin planning for three new schools, one major addition, renovations to several buildings and a study of all athletic fields. This spring, they will officially submit Certificate of Necessity (CN) requests to the State of Delaware for projects including: a new elementary school at the Ingram Pond property in Millsboro; a new middle school on the Sussex Central High School property north of Millsboro; replacement of the Howard T. Ennis School building in Georgetown and much more.

Delaware State News
Amid tight state budgets, black colleges seek other students
Faced with stalled state funding, Dr. Harry L. Williams, the president of Delaware State University, a historically black public university, had to get creative: He slashed a quarter of the school’s academic programs and began aggressively recruiting students who aren’t black. He’s gone as far as China to strike agreements with universities there that will bring Chinese exchange students to Delaware State to study. “It’s a revenue generator for us and a way of marketing the university,” Williams said of the school’s international recruiting.

Sussex Countian
Teaching talk: Indian River reaches out with podcasts
Podcasts are the new form of communication in Indian River School District. With only a laptop and a microphone, David Maull, spokesperson for the district, started conducting bi-weekly interviews with district leaders in March. He’s been using the opportunity to discuss in-depth topics like the increasing use of technology in the classroom with IT Specialist Mike League, lack of space in the elementary schools with school board president James Hudson and a possible referendum with Superintendent Susan Bunting. “It’s a neat and different way to let people know what’s happening in the school district,” Maull said.

Sussex County Post
Brightening every student’s day, future mission of Showell’s honored school counselor
Like snowflakes, no two schooldays for Cheryl Carey are ever alike. And like sunshine, her daily mission as school counselor is to brighten the day and future for all 300-plus students at Phillip Showell Elementary School. “I try to break down barriers for my kids so that they can have the best chance of growing academically, socially and emotionally every single day,” said Ms. Carey. “One of my goals is to work with parents, work with staff and work with students so that every child that walks through my doorway feels like they have an equal opportunity to get the best education.”

The News Journal
Essay makes Concord valedictorian momentarily famous
The valedictorian at Concord High School has become a minor Internet sensation in the last few weeks. “At first I was like, ‘oh, cool,'” said Brittany Stinson, an 18-year-old who has glasses and an unusual amount of poise. Now it’s dragging on a little, she said. It started when she got acceptance letters from a total of 11 schools, including five in the Ivy League, and, “being a teenager, I took to Twitter,” she said last week. A reporter saw her tweet a couple of weeks ago and contacted her, which set off a spate of stories in publications from Business Insider to Cosmopolitan.

Concord High engineers take national title
Six seniors at Concord High School have won a national engineering contest with a machine that helps sort medication. They developed the “scan ‘n sort” machine after they saw a disabled volunteer at Christiana Hospital struggling to get medications categorized in the right place. “In the littlest and the biggest ways, we can change someone’s life in some way,” said Nick Adinolfi, 17, who’s on the team. It’s a versatile device, explained Sophia Friedeborn, 18, since it can accommodate workers who have trouble with hearing, dexterity, or vision – it has speakers and a robotic voice that can read aloud the names of medications.

The path to college for first-generation students
Javier Barrueta’s first step toward college was actually a boat ride. At 4 years old, his mother and two sisters put him on a small, inflatable raft and pushed him across a river while swimming behind. His mother carried him through a frigid desert under a wide open sky full of stars with prayers on her breath that the border patrol wouldn’t find them. “That’s not an easy decision for any mother,” he said. They were crossing without papers from Mexico in the spring of 2002. “We did it through a coyote,” he said, referring to the smugglers who are paid to show immigrants the route to America.

National

NPR
Why America’s schools have a money problem
Let’s begin with a choice. Say there’s a check in the mail. It’s meant to help you run your household. You can use it to keep the lights on, the water running and food on the table. Would you rather that check be for $9,794 or $28,639? It’s not a trick question. It’s the story of America’s schools in two numbers. That $9,794 is how much money the Chicago Ridge School District in Illinois spent per child in 2013 (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to account for regional cost differences). It’s well below that year’s national average of $11,841.

Tampa Bay Times
‘School choice’ becomes Florida law; Gov. Rick Scott also signs 19 other bills
Florida’s public school students, starting in 2017-18, will be able to attend any school in the state that has space available, under a massive education bill that Gov. Rick Scott signed into law Thursday. Starting July 1, the measure also will let high school athletes have immediate eligibility when transferring schools, and it will subject charter schools to more accountability and a new formula for receiving capital dollars. Scott also signed 19 other bills, including the session’s main transportation package and new laws affecting health care policy and Citizens Property Insurance Committee.

The Tennessean
Tennessee phases out Common Core
State education officials approved new English and math standards Friday, marking the symbolic end of controversial Common Core standards in Tennessee. Tennessee is the latest state to phase out Common Core, joining Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina.  Like its predecessors, Tennessee’s English and math standards have a new name, but still have roots in Common Core. Common Core standards ignited a political brawl last year when state lawmakers, who saw the standards as federal overreach, pushed to scrap them. In response to cries for state-specific standards, Gov. Bill Haslam authorized a review of the state’s English and math standards.

The New York Times
New York to expand gifted offerings as disparities remain
The number of students who scored high enough to qualify for New York City’s gifted and talented programs rose this year, the Education Department said on Thursday. But the neighborhoods in which those children live continued along a familiar pattern: In wealthy districts, more children take the tests, and score well on them, than in districts where families are poor. In an effort to make the programs available to more students, the department also announced that new gifted and talented programs would open next school year in four districts that do not currently have them, beginning at the third-grade level.

Kahoot app brings urgency of a quiz show to the classroom
Kahoot, an online quiz system from Norway that is fast gaining market share in schools across the United States, plays out like a television game show spliced with a video game. Cast in the role of game host, teachers introduce a multiple-choice quiz — on, say, plant life or English grammar. Using the Kahoot platform, they project one quiz question at a time onto a whiteboard or screen at the front of their classrooms. Players typically have 30 seconds to click an answer on their laptops, tablets or smartphones.