August 15, 2017

Delaware News

Newsworks
Baseball icon gives backpacks, supplies to Wilmington students
Former New York Yankee pitcher Mariano Rivera, renowned for his nearly unhittable “cut” fastball, is universally regarded as the best closer in baseball history. In his fourth summer or retirement, however, the future Hall of Famer has a new mission: putting backpacks full of school supplies into the hands of low-income students.

Rodel Blog
Three things to know about Delaware state tests
Blog post by Jeremy Hidalgo, policy fellow, and Shyanne Miller, policy associate at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
It’s that time of year again—the release of Smarter Assessment and SAT results. The Delaware Department of Education officially released data in late July. While reactions were mixed (see the official release from DDOE, as well as The News Journal’s reaction), we tried to look behind the numbers to shed a bit more light on the results.

Sussex County Post
IRSD schools hosting open houses in August
School bells will soon chime. Schools in the Indian River School District will help ring in the 2017-18 school year will host a series of open houses during the month of August. Open houses will allow students and parents to meet teachers and staff, view class lists and tour school buildings. A number of schools will host multiple sessions during a three-day period, with each session catering to a different grade level.

The News Journal
To create jobs, encourage young entrepreneurs: Delaware Voices
Opinion by Carrie Leishman, president and CEO of the Delaware Restaurant Association
Governor John Carney recently announced that he will spend August meeting with small business owners, innovators, and entrepreneurs in an effort to listen to their concerns and restructure economic development. This is seemingly at odds with the more progressive wing of his party’s call for $15 an hour starting wages, single payer health care and free college for all.

National News

Education Week
The nation’s teaching force is still mostly white and female
Teachers tend to be white, female, and have nearly a decade and a half of experience in the classroom, according to new data released Monday by the federal government. But there are signs that the nation’s teaching force is gradually growing more diverse. It is also more heterogeneous: The nation’s charter school teachers look significantly different from teachers in traditional public schools.

EdSource
Charter schools take a hit in nationwide poll
The public’s support for charter schools fell significantly from a year ago nationwide and among both Democrats and Republicans, according to an annual poll by the magazine Education Next. Although a small plurality still favor charters, the 12 percentage point drop in support, from 51 percent to 39 percent, marked the biggest shift in this year’s survey results, released Monday.

Forbes
This early child education group is getting a closer look from Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy
Alongside a pale pink house in East Palo Alto, Calif., a gaggle of 5 year olds wearing green graduation caps and gowns waited quietly for a group photo to be taken. It was a proud moment for their parents. On this Saturday morning in August, each child had just received a kindergarten-readiness degree from a growing education nonprofit called 10 Books A Home.

NPR
Social and emotional skills: Everybody loves them, but still can’t define them
More and more, people in education agree on the importance of schools’ paying attention to stuff other than academics. But still, no one agrees on what to call that “stuff.” I originally published a story on this topic two years ago. As I reported back then, there were a bunch of overlapping terms in play, from “character” to “grit” to “noncognitive skills.” This bagginess bugged me, as a member of the education media.

The 74 Million
A Massachusetts teachers union votes to kill a successful charter school, as families scramble for answers
Near the start of the Haverhill School Committee meeting last month, Devan Ferreira stepped to the mic to ask a few questions about the future of the school attended by two — and soon three, she hopes — of her children. Ferreira’s kids attend a rare kind of school allowed by Massachusetts law called a Horace Mann charter, which is overseen by the local school district.