April 25, 2014

Local News

The News Journal
Time for Delaware to start worrying about budget
An editorial
The filing deadline for 2013 taxes is Wednesday. A good day for the state coffers will make officials happy. A good day for the taxpayers will not. A report from a non-partisan expert panel that came earlier this week forecast a revenue shortfall of about $55 million for the budget that begins July 1.

Dover Post
Lake Forest School District to hold referendum
Voters in the Lake Forest School District are scheduled to take to the polls on May 28 to vote whether or not to approve $7.7 million worth of improvements at all six of the district’s schools. If the referendum passes, the state will pick up just over $5 million of the total cost. Kent County will provide an additional $1.36 million through the School District Capital Improvement Fund.

WHYY
As safety bills sit in committee, Delaware school districts make their own improvements
Several school safety initiatives remain idle while Delaware legislators wait to see if adequate funding will be available in the 2015 budget. House Bill 221 would require schools to make their doors capable of locking from both the inside and outside. House Bill 33 would require schools to install silent alarms, or “panic buttons,” that would immediately alert law enforcement officials when activated.

National News

The Hechinger Report
Community college credits often don’t transfer
Researchers concluded that a big reason many community college students fail to get a four-year degree is because the universities they transfer to won’t accept many of their credits.

Chalkbeat New York
New York sees surge in enrollment numbers
Charter schools in New York enrolled close to 70,000 students in 2014, and the sector will continue to grow rapidly in the coming years as existing schools add on new grades each year.

The Oregonian
Oregon agrees on plan to rate teachers
Oregon has settled on an approach to evaluating teachers based in part their students’ test score gains, which will lead to big changes in the way the state’s teachers have their performance judged.

Education Week
NAEP crafts plan to deploy tablets for testing
The architects of one of the most highly regarded gauges of student achievement are preparing for a dramatic expansion of technology-based assessment, while relying on a strikingly different approach from the one that will be used to give online common-core exams in the states.

Associated Press
Washington becomes first state to lose federal waiver
Washington state has become the first to lose its federal waiver for requirements of the No Child Left Behind education law as well as control over how approximately $40 million is spent to improve public school student outcomes

Stateline
State lawmakers using budget to pressure public universities
State lawmakers around the country are brandishing their budget pens to penalize public colleges and universities for what they teach, what their professors say and which organizations the schools work with.

The Patriot News
Pennsylvania charter school operators take issue with funding proposal
Charter school operators are saying if a proposal to overhaul special education funding in Pennsylvania — along with identical bills in the House and Senate — is passed, it will be difficult for them to operate.