December 29, 2014

Delaware News

The News Journal
Fixing Delaware’s troubled schools
Teachers and parents at Wilmington’s inner-city schools have heard it all before: Education is the cure for the city’s sicknesses of crime and poverty. Denise West believes that. She wakes up every morning to escort a gaggle of 10 kids, including two grandsons, past boarded-up houses plastered with graffiti, past young unemployed men smoking cigarettes while sitting on stoops, to Stubbs Elementary School.

State points to schools that have grown scores
If Eastside Charter can do it, any of Wilmington’s six “priority schools” can do it. Simply put, that’s the way Gov. Jack Markell and Education Secretary Mark Murphy feel about improving the city’s struggling inner-city schools.

Time to define Wilmington’s education possibilities
An op-ed by Tony Allen, Chairman, Governor’s Wilmington Educational Advisory Committee
Today, I write with great care. Like many, my ability to opine on the promise of Wilmington and its challenges is well documented. However, in my lifetime, changing Wilmington has not been easy. In key areas of neighborhood redevelopment, violence prevention, promoting healthy lifestyles and true educational reform, the impact of any initiative never seems to be enough, never spreads itself across the full spectrum of our citizenry and never sustains itself from generation to generation.

Common Core’s test for states
An op-ed by Michael J. Petrilli, President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute; and Michael Brickman, National Policy Director, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
The basic problem is that it’s impossible to draft standards that prepare students for college and career readiness and that look nothing like Common Core. That’s because Common Core, though not perfect, represents a good-faith effort to incorporate the current evidence of what students need to know and do to succeed in credit-bearing courses in college or to land a good-paying job – and the milestones younger students need to pass to reach those goals.

WDDE
Gov. Markell spotlights dual enrollment opportunities for Delaware students in weekly message
In his weekly message, Governor Jack Markell highlighted efforts in the First State to encourage students to earn college credit or apply to colleges while in high school. Markell says a college education is key to earning a stable, high-paying job in today’s economy.

DSU’s President Scholarship Ball nets over $100k
Delaware State University raised more than $150,000 at its President’s Scholarship Ball on December 13th. DSU President’s Community Partner Awards were presented to several recipients, including community activist Beatrice “Bebe” Coker; Jocelyn Stewart at Community Investment for Barclaycard US, and Enid Wallace-Sims at Delmarva Power.

National News

Michigan Live
Special education rates vary wildly by school district, race, gender and income
In Michigan, the likelihood of your child being identified as needing special education services can vary dramatically. And experts say some children in special education could have avoided the designation had they received more educational support in early grades.

Los Angeles Times
California schools step up efforts to help ‘long-term English learners’
Students struggling with English are receiving more attention under a new California law and initiatives by L.A. Unified and other school districts. The law requires the state to define and identify a “long-term English learner,” the first effort in the nation to do so.

John Goodlad dies at 94; led research on how schools fail to educate
John I. Goodlad, whose exhaustive analysis of the culture of schools and the reasons for their failures made him one of the intellectual leaders of the education reform movement that took off in the early 1980s, died Nov. 29 in Seattle. He was 94.

Education Week
Arne Duncan’s edu-predictions for 2015
We’ve got just a few more days before it’s time to put on the New Year’s Eve dancing shoes and break open the champagne. So what’s U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan predicting for next year?

What you can learn, or not, from the Ed. Dept.’s NCLB waiver data
No Child Left Behind Act waivers have been around for more than a year, and states are beginning the process of writing applications for renewals, which will allow them to keep their flexibility for at least another two years.