August 21, 2014
Local News
The News Journal
Virtually no Del. teachers receive poor evaluations
Zero percent of Delaware teachers were rated ineffective and only one percent were rated “needs improvement” during the last school year, leaving more than half of teachers to be rated effective and almost half to be rated highly effective.
Caesar Rodney names new administrators
The Caesar Rodney School District has named three new principals and a new district administrator.
National News
Hawaii Reporter
Hawaii State Department of Education releases Educator Effectiveness System results from school year 2013-2014
An overwhelming majority of Hawaii’s 11,000-plus teachers were rated “effective” or “highly effective” educators.
Tampa Bay Times
Florida and feds in a showdown over when to test students still learning English
Federal education officials have decided Florida does not know best when it comes to school accountability and English language learners.
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. college readiness lags in math, science
More students than ever are taking the ACT college admissions test, but student achievement remains flat, as nearly one-third of students are not meeting any college-readiness benchmarks.
Education Week
U.S. school enrollment hits majority-minority milestone
For the first time, the overall number of Latino, African-American, and Asian students in public K-12 schools will surpass the number of non-Hispanic white students.
Poll: Many Americans don’t understand charter schools but favor them anyway
A major long-running survey of American attitudes toward public education shows there’s strong support for charter schools, even though many people don’t really understand how charters work. More than 60 percent of survey respondents said they favored charter schools in the 46th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Towards the Public Schools. The opposite was true for school vouchers, which two-thirds of respondents said they opposed.
Next generation science standards: Which states adopted and when?
So far, a dozen states and the District of Columbia have adopted Next Generation Science Standards. The K-12 science standards, finalized in April 2013, were developed by 26 “lead state partners” in collaboration with several national groups. Key dimensions of the standards include providing a greater emphasis on depth over breadth of science content and asking students to apply their learning through the practices of scientific inquiry and engineering design.