December 17, 2015

Delaware

Cape Gazette
Milton Elementary students help families in need
Once again this holiday season, Milton Elementary School students collected toys, games, clothing and gifts to fill Christmas stockings for needy Sussex County families in conjunction with The Salvation Army State of Delaware, Sussex County. Donations will be disbursed to local children from ages 3 to 12.

Dover Post
Capital adds preventive measures to bus policy
Capital School District is changing how it disciplines students who misbehave on the bus. Policy revisions aim to present repeat offenses. Officials hope these new rules will in turn make buses safer by decreasing possible distractions. In a unanimous vote at the Dec. 9 regular board of education meeting, Supervisor of Student Support Services Tonya Guinn was given the green light to make the changes permanent.

Newsworks
Another Delaware charter to close
Red Clay School District’s board of education voted unanimously Wednesday to not renew the charter of Delaware College Preparatory Academy (DCPA), a K-5 school in Wilmington with just over 200 students. Barring a legal challenge, DCPA will close at the end of the school year. Poor academic performance, lagging enrollment, and fiscal worries prompted the district to act.

Commission approves Wilmington redistricting plan
The Wilmington Education Improvement Commission’s plan calls for the Christina School District to leave Delaware’s biggest city. The roughly 2,500 Wilmington students attending Christina schools would be transferred to the Red Clay Consolidated School District. The plan will be presented to the State Board of Education on Thursday. The state board will either approve or reject the plan in its entirety next month, at its regular January meeting. If OK’d by the state board, the proposal must then earn the approval of the state legislature and the governor.

The News Journal
Red Clay votes to close charter school
The Red Clay School Board has voted to close Delaware College Preparatory Academy, a Wilmington charter school with 186 students. Board members voted swiftly not to renew the school’s charter without discussion at a meeting Wednesday night. They followed the recommendations of a committee of district officials who said it is on precarious financial footing and students are struggling academically. DCPA is one of a handful of charter schools authorized by the Red Clay School District, not the state.

Rethink the chaos of school districts in Wilmington
Opinion by Joseph Pika and Henry Harper, co-chairs of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission’s Redistricting Committee
Seventeen independent entities currently deliver public education to 11,500 students within Wilmington’s city limits. This includes four traditional school districts, one vocational-technical school district, and 12 charter schools. In this case, more is not merrier—nor is it coherent or effective in delivering results. Seldom do the traditional districts coordinate or even collaborate on curriculum decisions or instructional policies among themselves. Nor do the charter schools.

National

Chalkbeat Tennessee
As Tennessee finishes its Race to the Top, teachers caught in middle of competing changes
Fueled by a half-billion-dollar influx of federal education funds, the state invested more money than ever to help teachers reach their students as part of a massive overhaul of Tennessee’s K-12 public education system. It also raised the stakes of the standardized tests that many educators say undermine good teaching. Those funds, which flowed through the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top competition, dried up this year. What’s left behind are higher-than-ever consequences for student test scores, which Tennessee teachers are now trying to reconcile with the changes in teaching that the state has pushed.

Education Week
Education spending slated for $1.2 billion boost in Congressional budget deal
Blog post by Andrew Ujifusa, federal policy reporter at Education Week
Title I aid for the nation’s neediest students would get a $500 million boost up to approximately $14.9 billion, while state grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would rise by $415 million up to $11.9 billion, as part of an omnibus federal budget deal announced by the House appropriations committee early Wednesday.

The Hechinger Repot
The Every Student Succeeds Act includes some new ideas on how to train better teachers
The new federal education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act could introduce new ways to prepare teachers for the classroom that bypass traditional programs.The bill, signed by President Obama on Dec. 10, includes provisions that would allow states to set up new degree-granting academies for teachers outside of traditional higher education systems and would also encourage the creation of residency programs, in which teacher recruits are paired with veterans for a year of in-classroom training in addition to their coursework.

The New York Times
New York City to close 3 troubled public schools in Brooklyn
The New York City Education Department announced on Monday that it planned to close three poorly performing schools at the end of the current school year. It is the first time Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has elected to shut down any noncharter public schools.

The Washington Post
Task force to study D.C. charter and traditional public schools
The District’s deputy mayor for education announced Wednesday the members of a task force that will be charged with developing policy recommendations to improve coordination between the District’s charter and traditional public schools. The group will be co-chaired by the deputy mayor for education, Jennifer C. Niles, and former mayor Anthony A. Williams. It will be facilitated by Jim Sandman, former general counsel for D.C. Public Schools.