December 14, 2015

Delaware

The News Journal
Mt. Pleasant High students seek better refugee housing
Students are participating in WikiHouse, an online-based platform that bills itself as “the Wikipedia of Things.” The organization’s goal is to create an open-source collection of building designs and blueprints that are easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. The student project goal is to make the house parts modular and assembly relatively simple. That means organizations that need to build shelter can do so quickly, and it means designs can be modified to suit different needs.

A ‘to-do’ list for Wilmington
Opinion by Theo K. Gregory, president of Wilmington City Council
Recent initiatives involving charter schools and redistricting have made significant progress in working towards mitigating some of the educational inequities faced by Wilmington’s young men and women, but there remains more work to be done. The city should enhance its advocacy on behalf of its youth population through the creation of an Office of Education and Public Policy – a mechanism to ensure future city representation in educational programming for those growing up throughout Wilmington.

Cape Gazette
Millsboro teacher selected for professional development scholarship
Susan E. Mitchell, agricultural educator at Millsboro Middle School, is one of a select group of agriculture teachers nationwide who received a 2015 Teachers Turn the Key professional development scholarship. As a scholarship recipient, Mitchell attended the National Association of Agricultural Educators annual convention in New Orleans Nov. 17-21.

 Delaware Public Media
A gift guide for young scientists that won’t break the bank
If you’re looking for a holiday gift that could turn your child into a budding scientist or engineer, you might find it right in your garage or your kitchen. Think: a hammer, a broken appliance or a chicken wing. That’s the advice of the University of Delaware’s Melissa Jurist, who directs K-12 education for the College of Engineering.

Enlighten Me: Generation Voice projects
We’re dedicating this week and next week’s Enlighten Me segments to pieces produced this fall by Generation Voice – our youth media program. It’s an ongoing collaboration between Delaware Public Media and the Brandywine School District.

Governor Markell spotlights education initiatives in weekly message
In his weekly message, Gov. Jack Markell talked about preparing students for success in the new economy. He recently announced an additional Pathways to Prosperity grants to high schools to add programs in finance, health, and computer networking, while expanding others in IT, engineering, and culinary arts. Those classes will allow students to earn college credit and gain workplace experience.

Sussex County Post
Student sight, ability to learn focus of Vision to Learn program
Student eyesight and the ability to learn were in clear focus Thursday at North Georgetown Elementary School. Vision To Learn launched their expansion into Sussex County with distribution of free glasses to students at North Georgetown Elementary. The nonprofit organization Vision To Learn delivers free eye exams and glasses to kids in low-income communities, as part of a pilot project in the state of Delaware.

Technical.ly Delaware
‘Wilmington will not succeed without UD’: Paul McConnell
Paul McConnell, 1313 Innovation cofounder and real estate developer, has laid out a path forward for the city of Wilmington. There might be some pit stops here and there and a detour or two along the way, but it’s a path forward nonetheless. And that path involves getting the University of Delaware into the city. It’s an idea McConnell has called his “number one goal” — a necessary step toward better connecting the university with the city’s thriving business community, its startups and its own graduates.

UDaily
Dinner and a book: UD faculty author Teague reaches out to young readers and parents
When David Teague looks out at the rapt faces of fifth-graders eager to talk with him — an actual author! — at a reading of his latest book, he sees much more than today’s potential customers. He sees the University of Delaware students of tomorrow.

National

Education Week
Three years after Newton, schools broaden their definition of safety
It’s been three years since a gunman forced his way into a Newtown, Conn., elementary school and killed 20 young children and six staff members before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life as police responded to the scene. The shootings were a catalyst for discussions that continue today about schools’ responsibility to keep students safe. For many educators, those discussions have led to a broader understanding of what safety means for students—both physically and emotionally.

Governing
Fixing the disconnect between teacher compensation and performance
Blog by Charles Chieppo, Research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center
Most public-school teachers’ salaries are determined by years in the classroom and degrees held. But a new study from the Manhattan Institute shows that the premium we pay for teacher experience is far greater than is typically acknowledged. Research shows that teachers tend to steadily improve professionally at first, then plateau after five to seven years. But pension benefits are accrued on a very different schedule.

Tech Crunch
School districts are standing in the way of public school edtech
No gymnasiums, no cafeterias and no administrators. That’s school policy at AltSchools, a chain of private, for-profit schools backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Mark Zuckerberg. At the location I visited, the school schedule was written on a white board and could be changed in real time. Students flowed between grade levels and classes based upon what they wanted and needed from teachers. My visit got me thinking — how would one of our school districts, which might contain 100,000 or more students, implement AltSchools’ model? Would they need to build small schools on every corner, until they were as ubiquitous as Starbucks?

The Bismarck Tribune
As education bill passes, N.D. to modify testing, review Common Core
North Dakota will scrap a portion of the states’ new standardized test and review the Common Core math and English standards, State Superintendent Kirsten Baesler said at a press conference Wednesday hours after Congress passed a major education overhaul. Students in grades 3-8 and 11 will still take the computer portion of the Smarter Balanced test in math and English this spring. They also will continue to complete a “performance task” in both subjects that requires students to respond to questions on topics such as deserts or doughnut prices.

The Washington Post
Wanted in New York City: A thousand black, Latino and Asian male teachers
New York City, which has the nation’s largest public school system, wants to hire 1,000 black, Latino and Asian male teachers by 2017 to create a teaching corps that more closely matches the student body. The program, called NYC Men Teach, is part of the Young Men’s Initiative, a city program that focuses public and private funding on ways to reduce disparities between young black and Latino men and their peers when it comes to education, health, employment and the criminal justice system.