It’s Time to Reassess…Our Homes
A recent push by the City of Rehoboth Beach to reassess properties in the sea-side community highlights a long-simmering problem with municipal finance in general and school finance in particular in Delaware: the burden of local property taxes is unequally spread from one property owner to the next. While Rehoboth Beach’s proposal would...
Mediocre Isn’t Good Enough
On Tuesday, Jan. 31, the Fordham Institute released its “State of the State” analysis on science content standards across the country. They have done this before—earlier last year they reviewed Delaware’s Social Studies standards (we didn’t do very well), and in 2010 they reviewed ELA (we failed) and math (we got a B). With such a spotty...
Delaware Still Leads National Pack Despite Mid-Course Corrections
Secretary Lowery recently announced changes to DPAS II for this year as well as highlighting that more changes are upcoming for the next school year – all of which will impact various decisions, including bonuses for “highly-effective” educators and tenure decisions.
For this school year, all teachers will be evaluated based upon Components...
Governor Recommends 5.6% Increase in State Education Budget
On Thursday, Governor Markell unveiled his FY 2013 proposed budget, which recommends increasing the state’s investment in public education by roughly $63 million, or 5.7% over current year funding levels. In particular, the governor recommends appropriating:
$27.4 million for an Educational Sustainment Fund, an unrestricted pot of money...