April 28, 2017
Delaware News
Coastal Point
Murray stepping away from IRHS for family
After four years, Bennett Murray has announced that he will leave the position of Indian River High School principal. Starting this autumn, he’ll be assigned as an assistant principal in the district, spending half his time at Georgetown Elementary School and half at the Howard T. Ennis School. “What I told my staff is: Right now, I need to back away from the night duty. At a high school, there’s numerous night duties,” he said of the games, concerts and more.
IRSD unions to vote on new contracts
When the Indian River School District went to referendum in March, administrators said one potential way to save money was to renegotiate staff contracts. More recently, within the Indian River Education Association, the teachers and the secretaries have given the go-ahead to renegotiate contracts, potentially spreading next year’s planned pay raise over the next few years instead.
Delaware 105.9
Incoming DSEA President takes Governor Carney to task on budget and education
The President-elect for the Delaware State Education Association is concerned with certain aspects of Governor John Carney’s budget. DSEA President-elect Mike Matthews followed the town hall, and he wasn’t satisfied with most of Carney’s answers.
DNREC
Delaware middle school students enjoy hands-on renewable energy experience with DNREC-sponsored Junior Solar Sprint
Gauger-Cobbs Middle School of Newark and W.T. Chipman Middle School of Harrington claimed the checkered flag today as 24 teams of middle school students from 14 schools across the state vied for honors in the Junior Solar Sprint, a competition in which students build and race solar-powered model cars.
Rodel Blog
The link between career/technical education and student success
Blog post by Jenna Bucsak, senior program officer at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
Just one career and technical education course above the average can boost a student’s odds of graduating high school and enrolling in a two-year college, according to a study by the Fordham Institute. It can also lead to a higher likelihood of college enrollment, employment, and better wages.
Digging Deeper: Why graduation rates don’t tell the whole story
Blog post by Jenna Bucsak, senior program officer at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
It may be stating the obvious, but a high school diploma is not the sole determinant of student success. Instead, we usually need to examine a student’s entire academic career—from kindergarten through 12th grade—to get a picture of how well prepared they are to pursue their interests after high school.
National News
Education Week
In Minnesota and U.S., teacher-powered schools take root
At Impact Academy, one of a growing number of teacher-powered schools across the country, teachers’ fingerprints are all over the purple walls, even though they can’t really be seen. That’s because the school’s layout, its mission, the style of learning—everything is decided by the teachers themselves.
Educators share their #BestPD, #WorstPD
Education Week asked educators to share on Twitter the professional development that inspired them or that left them scratching their heads. Here’s a sample of responses.
NPR
A path out of poverty: Career training + quality pre-K
What makes a high-quality learning program effective not just for the child but the whole family? What else, besides a well-run pre-K, is essential to help families break out of intergenerational poverty? These are some of the key questions that an approach called “two-generation” programs are working to answer. There are many of these “two-gen” programs across the U.S.
The Atlantic
How does race affect a student’s math education?
Kassie Benjamin-Ficken, a teacher in Minneapolis, discovered her love of math in elementary school. One of her earliest memories is begging her mother to come to school so her teachers could share how she excelled in math class. While earning average scores in reading, she was consistently above average for math—which instilled her with a sense of accomplishment.
The New York Times
Family by family, how school segregation still happens
Elana Shneyer and Adam Kaufman live a few hundred feet from Public School 165, the Robert E. Simon School, on West 109th Street, at the edge of Morningside Heights in Manhattan. When they started looking for a kindergarten for their son, who will start in the fall, the school was an early stop. That made them unusual. Although their neighborhood is diverse, the children who go to P.S. 165, its zoned school, are mostly Hispanic and low-income.