May 16, 2013

Local News

WDEL
Star Hill’s fluency station improves reading comprehension
Teaching students to read with meaning is the goal of an award-winning program at one downstate school. With standardized testing, it became obvious that we were struggling with comprehension.” To fix that, Star Hill Elementary School in Camden-Wyoming has set up a fluency station after discovering it’s the bridge to comprehension. Barbara Micklus is the school’s achievement liaison teacher. “Part of fluency is prosodic reading and reading with meaning so we realized that we really needed to teach kids how to do that, if they didn’t know how to do that,” says Micklus.

The Sussex Countian
Post-Labor Day start date proposed for all Delaware schools
The bi-partisan Senate Concurrent Resolution introduced by Hocker calls for the task force to investigate whether extending the summer season past Labor Day, while keeping the mandated number of days in the school calendar, would provide considerable economic benefit to the state. The task force would include state legislators, state and local school officials, teachers, state tourism officials, and representatives of businesses impacted by summer tourism. The resolution directs the task force to report its findings and recommendations to the General Assembly and the governor by Jan. 14, 2014.

The News Journal
Reading is essential to success in classroom

An opinion by Pat Heffernan, member of the Delaware State Board of Education
Reading is absolutely essential for success in school and in life, setting the foundation for access to and mastery of most other subject areas. Yet, according to the National Assessment on Educational Progress, only about 1⁄3 of Delaware students are proficient in reading. Why is this and what can be done about it?

National News

Education Week
Common Core supporters firing back
Supporters of the Common Core are moving to confront increasingly high-profile opposition to the standards at the state and national levels by rallying the private sector and initiating coordinated public relations campaigns as schools continue implementation. State education officials, the business community, and advocacy groups are ramping up efforts to buttress support for the standards and to counter what they say is misinformation.

E-Rate needs overhaul for digital era, experts argue
As school districts strive to put more technology into schools to support 1-to-1 computing initiatives and prepare for the common-core online assessments, the federal E-rate program is in danger of becoming as outdated and insufficient as a sputtering dial-up connection in a Wi-Fi world. While the program can boast great success since its inception—just 14 percent of schools were connected to the Internet when the E-rate was launched in 1996, compared with near-universal access today—it is now at risk of buckling under the weight of districts’ technological demands in the age of laptops, tablets, smartphones, and 24/7 online activity.

The New York Times
On education, Thompson tries to set himself apart
He would keep mayoral control of the New York City school system, but relinquish control of the board that approves educational policy. He would cease closing schools as aggressively as the Bloomberg administration has been, yet “take action” against faltering schools. As mayor, William C. Thompson Jr., would hold charter schools and traditional schools to “the same standards,” he said on Wednesday, in a 23-minute speech laying out his vision for education. But he credited some charter schools for their longer school days, and did not say he would stop giving them free space in public school buildings, as some Bloomberg administration opponents have demanded.

Lawsuits filed over Chicago school closings
Parents in Chicago have filed two federal lawsuits opposing proposed school closings. In March, the Chicago Public Schools identified 53 schools that it planned to close to save $560 million over 10 years. The school board will vote on the proposal next Wednesday.

Related Topics: E-Rate, Education Technology, Online Learning, Pat Heffernan, State Board of Education, Superstars in Education