October 5, 2012
Local News
The News Journal
Get to know your schools: Be a principal
An editorial
The State Chamber of Commerce provides a way to do just that through its Principal for a Day program. It puts business leaders inside the school where they can witness first-hand the challenges, the dilemmas and the joys of teaching children. Business leaders who have done this in the past have come away with a greater understanding of the challenges, the strengths and the weaknesses of our system.
Cape Gazette
Cape, IR educators win for their technology programs
Two downstate educators have a little extra money to show for their technology programs. Lori Roe, an instructional technology specialist for Cape Henlopen High School, and Audrey Carey, supervisor of elementary education for Indian River School District, were two of five winners selected by the Rodel Foundation’s iEducate Delaware initiative.
National News
Education Week
New center established to develop effective special educators
The University of Florida received a grant from the Education Department to support states so they can make general and special education classroom teachers more effective in their work with students with disabilities. The university will eventually roll out a special-education reform program to 20 states. The grant is one of a number the department has announced in recent weeks that involve special education.
Exit exams face pinch in Common Core pinch
With many states crafting assessments based on the common-core standards—and an increasing emphasis on college and career readiness—some are rethinking the kind of tests high school students must pass to graduate, or whether to use such exit exams at all. Twenty-five states, enrolling a total of 34.1 million students, make exit exams a graduation requirement. But now states including Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island plan to use new common-core-aligned tests as exit exams in some form once those tests are fully implemented in 2014-15.
Schools falter at keeping ELL families in the loop
As thousands of communities—especially in the South—became booming gateways for immigrant families during the 1990s and the early years of the new century, public schools struggled with the unfamiliar task of serving the large numbers of English-learners arriving in their classrooms. But even as immigration has slowed or stopped in many places, and instructional programs for English-learners have matured, serving immigrant families and their children remains a work in progress in many public schools, especially those in communities that are skeptical, or sometimes hostile, to the newcomers.
Related Topics: Common Core, Education Philanthropy, Education Technology, School Leadership, special education