December 12, 2012
Local News
DFM News
DSEA president sees fiscal cliff threat to education in Delaware
Frederika Jenner, President of the Delaware State Education Association, says that translates to a possible 43 million dollar hole in Delaware for a variety of programs assisting low income K-to-12 students. Jenner notes that that wouldn’t be the only facet of education to feel the effect. “There could be a loss of funding that would require Head Start programming to be reduced, those services to be not provided for either incoming students or they’d have to literally send some students home, I guess,” said Jenner.
Middletown Transcript
M.O.T. Charter School proposes charter high school
The M.O.T. Charter School will be holding an informational meeting Thursday night on a proposed charter high school that is expected to open in the fall of 2014. The proposed school will be divided into two academies – an Academy of the Arts and an Academy of Science and Technology.
The News Journal
Christina School District to alter tainted discipline policy
The Christina School District’s board of education voted Tuesday to work with federal officials to ensure students are disciplined equitably, a move that comes after a nearly three-year investigation of the district by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The federal investigation was focused on determining if the district discriminated against black students by disciplining them more “frequently and more harshly on the basis of race than similarly situated white students,” a U.S. Department of Education spokesman said. The school board voted 5-1 to enter into the agreement to fix the problem of disparate discipline rates among students. Board member Shirley Saffer voted no, explaining that she could not vote without knowing more about the investigation’s findings.
National News
Education Week
Arne Duncan picks 16 Race to the Top District winners
Sixteen winners—including three charter school organizations—will share $400 million in the Race to the Top district competition. Miami-Dade is the biggest urban district on the list, having just won the coveted Broad Prize this year. The charter school winners are IDEA public schools and the Harmony Science Academy consortia, both in Texas, and KIPP in the District in Columbia.
K-12 education advocates lobby to avert fiscal cliff
The number-one question keeping organizations that represent school districts and educators up at night is whether Congress will be able to reach an agreement to head off “sequestration,” a series of trigger budget cuts that will hit just about every federally funded education program on Jan. 2, unless Congress averts them by crafting a long-term agreement to curb the deficit. A number of K-12 programs, including Title I grants for districts and special education would be cut by 8.2 percent, although most districts wouldn’t feel the squeeze until next fall.
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles teachers’ evaluation bucks a trend
The recent groundbreaking agreement over evaluations for educators in the Los Angeles school district is a major victory for the teachers union because it limits the use of a controversial — but increasingly widespread — measurement of teacher effectiveness. The tentative pact puts the nation’s second-largest school system at odds with a national trend to gauge the effect of teachers on student achievement by using a value-added analysis. That method, known in Los Angeles Unified as Academic Growth Over Time, is opposed by many teacher unions as unreliable; but it is being used in Illinois, New York, Texas, Florida, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
U.S. Newswire
College Board names Dr. Stephanie Sanford as Chief of Policy, Advocacy, and Government Relations
The College Board announced that Dr. Stefanie Sanford has been appointed to lead the organization’s policy, advocacy and government relations work. The appointment is effective March 1, 2013. At the same time as Sanford’s appointment, the nonprofit education organization announced a substantial commitment to delivering high quality career technical education by appointing one of its most trusted senior leaders, Tom Rudin, to lead this major new initiative.
Related Topics: Arne Duncan, Federal Funds, Higher Education, Teacher Compensation, Teacher Evaluation, USED