August 26, 2013

Local News

The News Journal
New Castle County Vo-Tech names new principals
Delcastle Technical High School and Hodgson Vo-Tech will have new principals this school year, the New Castle County Vo-Tech School District has announced. Clifton Hayes will take over at Delcastle Tech. Formerly an assistant principal at Howard High School of Technology for seven years, Hayes previously was a student adviser at Delcastle for two years. He is the 2013 Assistant Principal of the Year and has a bachelor’s degree from Delaware State University, a master’s degree from West Virginia University and is completing a doctorate at DSU. Hayes takes the place of Joseph Jones, who is now the district’s director of assessment and accountability. Jerry Lamey will take over at Hodgson. Previously an assistant principal at St. Georges Technical High School, Lamey has a bachelor’s from UD and a master’s and doctorate from Wilmington University. A six-time state champion coach in wrestling, Lamey has been inducted into the Delaware Wrestling Hall of Fame. Lamey replaces Annemarie Linden, who is now the district’s director of adult education.

The Dover Post
Capital ninth-graders get a Jump Start on school year
Going into high school can be more than a little intimidating, which is why teachers and staff at Dover High School held their annual Jump Start Academy Aug. 12 – 14 to help the former eighth-graders make a smooth transition to their final four years in school. “We have a very big population,” said Dr. Evelyn Edney, principal for administration at Dover High. “We want to make sure we’re bringing in our newest Senators and teaching them how to be academically successful, socially successful and making sure they’re getting involved in school activities.” An average of 366 students took part in the program.

National News

Education Week
Federal oversight takes aim at waiver compliance
In the wake of the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to place three states on “high-risk status” for problems with their No Child Left Behind Act waivers, it’s clear that the federal push to grant states sweeping flexibility in school accountability will be fraught with stumbles. Implementing teacher evaluations tied to student growth is a significant sticking point for many waiver states, including Kansas, Oregon, and Washington—which were formally warned by federal officials Aug. 15 that they might lose their waivers if they don’t get new evaluations back on track. But during an initial phase of monitoring by the Education Department, federal officials are anxiously eyeing other potential land mines as well.

The New York Times
City makes test scores available on the web
Beginning Monday, parents of New York City public school students will be able to see online how well, or poorly, their children performed on a new set of state reading and math exams this spring. Parents have been able to call or visit their child’s school to learn individual scores since early August, but now they can learn the scores by logging onto the student information database known as Aris Parent Link. The database system, which cost $83 million, drew sharp criticism after it was introduced in 2008. Last year, an audit by the city comptroller’s office found that roughly 42 percent of teachers, assistant principals and principals did not even log on in each of the two prior academic years. Usage by parents, however, was not measured.

Fighting education overhaul, thousands of teachers disrupt Mexico City
Mexico’s highly anticipated education overhaul program — intended to weed out poorly performing teachers, establish professional hiring standards and weaken the powerful teachers’ union — is buckling under the tried-and-true tactic of huge street protests, throwing the heart of the capital into chaos. A radical teachers’ group mobilized thousands of members in Mexico City last week, chasing lawmakers from their chambers, occupying the city’s historic central square, blocking access to hotels and the international airport, and threatening to bring an already congested city to a halt in the coming days. Already, lawmakers, who passed the principal outlines of the education program in December and are negotiating additional legislation needed to carry it out, have shelved one of the bill’s most vital provisions, an evaluation requirement aimed at halting the common practice of buying and selling teaching jobs and establishing mechanisms to fire poorly performing instructors.

Topeka Capital-Journal
State legislation leads to boom in technical education
Kansas now pays tuition for high school juniors and seniors to take courses at technical colleges as a result of 2012 legislation. Last year the number of students taking career and technical classes at community and technical colleges jumped 50%, from 3,870 to 5,800. Although students can take any career and technical courses, there is an incentive for schools to steer them toward high-demand options.

The Washington Post
In D.C., controversy over academic testing has new frontier: preschool
The controversy over academic testing has spread to an unlikely frontier in Washington: preschool. Some D.C. parents are protesting a proposal by the city’s public charter school board to rank preschools based largely on how children as young as 3 are performing on reading and math tests. The board set out to provide parents with a clearer picture of how charter schools compare with one another. It also wants to provide educators with a way to measure progress toward the goal of better preparing children for school, a goal that led city leaders to make a historic investment in universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds. But as of Saturday, more than 200 parents had signed a petition asking the board to take a broader look at school quality and put more weight on the social and emotional development they want to see emphasized in their children’s schools.

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