Daily Education News – 10/4/13

Here are several stories in today’s news about Delaware education and from across the nation:

Local News

Delaware Department of Education
Delaware launches statewide teacher recruitment effort
The state is leading a new effort to recruit top educators to teach in Delaware schools. The campaign, “Join Delaware Schools,” aims to attract the caliber of teachers necessary to realize the state’s vision of a world-class education system for all students. Central to the campaign is the launch of an online teacher recruitment portal — www.joindelawareschools.org — that gives applicants a one-stop site to look for and learn about education jobs in the state. Join Delaware Schools is the first statewide teacher recruitment effort of its kind. Gov. Jack Markell met with education students at the University of Delaware Wednesday to encourage them in their studies and stress the importance of retaining top teachers in Delaware schools.

National News

Education Week
Building a district culture to foster innovation
In the 13,200-student Albemarle County school district in Virginia, many students spend their summers in “maker spaces,” building spaceships out of cardboard or participating in computer-programming workshops to learn how to code. Teachers spend big chunks of their time imagining how learning environments can be transformed to improve academic performance, turning in proposals with their ideas to the superintendent. For her part, Superintendent Pamela R. Moran reaches out to partners in the business community to determine what initiatives can help drive innovation in the district, which encompasses the area outside the city of Charlottesville.

Common Core and English-learners: Teaching math and language
The Understanding Language team at Stanford University has just released its first major collection of common core instructional resources in math meant for teachers who work with English-language learners. A team of experts, including Judit Moschkovich, a professor of mathematics education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, used or adapted tasks from two series of curricula: Inside Mathematics and the Mathematics Assessment Project. Each lesson in the package includes detailed notes on how teachers can use them in classrooms with English-learners.

Inside Higher Ed
Why students study STEM
While math achievement is a significant indicator of whether students enroll in STEM majors, early exposure to science and math courses has a greater influence on high school students’ interest in studying STEM fields, according to a forthcoming study. However, the largest indicator of whether a student declared a major in a STEM field was their intent to do so.

Harrisburg Patriot-News
Bill requiring public schools to offer online courses emerges from Pa. House Education Committee
A proposed Pennsylvania bill would mandate schools to offer online learning opportunities to students in secondary schools. House Bill 1718 would require schools to make available online courses to students in grades 9 to 12, starting in 2015-16. That mandate would apply to students in grades 6 to 8, starting in 2018-19.

Los Angeles Times
Gov. Brown signs testing overhaul bill, ending old state tests
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed A.B. 484, which replaces current state tests with ones aligned to the Common Core standards. Unless districts pay for their own testing, there will be no available scores this year because the new test is going through a trial period. The governor’s decision also tees up a looming confrontation with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who criticized the bill because of the lapse in test results.

Fort-Wayne Journal Gazette
No agreement among Indiana lawmakers over Common Core
Indiana lawmakers studying the state’s use of the Common Core standards haven’t been able to decide whether they recommend those be kept, changed, or dropped. The bi-partisan committee voted to approve a report with no direction on how the state should proceed with the standards. The committee was formed after the legislature approved a bill “pausing” implementation of the standards.