December 4, 2014

Delaware News

The News Journal
ACLU: Delaware charters causing resegregation
Delaware’s charter school system is resegregating the state’s public schools, the ACLU of Delaware and Community Legal Aid Society are arguing in a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The groups say more than three-quarters of charters statewide are racially identifiable as either mostly white or mostly minority schools, with those serving minority students vastly under-performing those serving more affluent white students.

U.S. Department of Education
Delaware reinforces commitment to expand college access at White House event
The White House College Opportunity Day of Action helps to support the President’s commitment to partner with colleges and universities, business leaders, and nonprofits to support students across the country to help our nation reach its goal of leading the world in college attainment. Last year, Governor Jack Markell pledged to expand the state’s college access efforts by: 1) providing every public school senior the time, resources and support needed to complete college applications during the school day; 2) providing all public school seniors time during the school day to write college essays; 3) helping families complete financial aid and scholarship forms; and 4) celebrating students as they apply and are admitted to college.

WDDE
ACLU of Delaware files federal complaint over First State charter schools
Delaware Charter Schools Network executive director Kendall Massett says many of the issues raised in the complaint have been heard before. “These complaints are not new to any state that has a charter school law. These allegations, myths – we actually call them myths – are actually talked about all over the United States,” said Massett. Massett adds charters in the First State face plenty of scrutiny and oversight under the state’s law and there are examples of charters that serve large minority, low income and special needs student populations and are succeeding – including EastSide Charter in Wilmington and Positive Outcomes in Camden.

Delaware Ed. Sec. at White House for College Opportunity Summit
Delaware’s Secretary of Education Mark Murphy is joining President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Biden in Washington D.C. Thursday for the White House College Opportunity Summit. Topics to be discussed at the summit include partnerships to encourage college enrollment and increase college graduation rates, especially for first generation, low-income and underrepresented students.

Hockessin Community News
Charter school policies in Delaware are leading to a ‘New Millenium Segregation’, critics say
“We are committed to providing access to great educational opportunities for every Delaware student, from birth through higher education, and we are proud of the academic progress our low-income students and children of color have made in recent years, including by closing the gap between minority and non-minority students,” said Alison May, press spokesperson for the Delaware DOE.

WHYY NewsWorks
Delaware charters fuel segregation, ACLU says
New Castle County Councilman Jea Street said existing racial segregation mirrored conditions prior to the 1978 court order that instituted a desegregation plan for New Castle County. “If I compare what was in place for African-American children from 1974 to now, I don’t see the progress,” Street said.

National News

Education Week
California’s K-12 funding overhaul slowly takes root
Aiming to fund its schools more efficiently and effectively, California has chosen an unusual, lead-from-behind approach that provides more state money to districts, but pushes communities to hold their local schools accountable for how that aid is used and for student performance.

Principals’ group latest to criticize ‘value added’ for teacher evaluations
The National Association of Secondary School Principals has entered the loud fray over teacher evaluation, giving preliminary approval to a statement that says test-score-based algorithms for measuring teacher quality aren’t appropriate.  In addition to criticizing the research on such “value added” systems, the statement says that the timing for using them comes at a terrible time, just as schools adjust to demands from the Common Core State Standards and other difficult new expectations for K-12 students.

Ed-tech implementation without supports cannot stand
A guest blog entry by Rob Dickson, Co-Founder and President, GreyED Solutions
Successful ed-tech implementations share several commonalities when you peel back to the core of the project. In most every case the project: started with a vision; focused on the teaching and learning happening at the student level; encompassed the right stakeholders in the conversation; supported teachers by equipping them with the necessary support; and analyzed and reflected on their implementation to allow for corrections throughout the process.

Missouri must stop payments for Common-Core test, judge orders
A Missouri judge issued a temporary, two-week restraining order last week that requires the state to stop making payments to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that is developing tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green issued the order on Nov. 25 as part of a court case brought by a group of Missourians who are challenging the state’s membership in Smarter Balanced as an “illegal interstate compact.”

New York Times
Middle-class pay elusive for teacher, report says
A report, by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit group that advocates tougher teacher standards, finds that while teachers in places like Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, can reach a high salary benchmark relatively early in their careers, teachers in New York City, San Francisco and Fairfax County, Va., must work more than three decades to hit comparable salary levels, when adjusted for the cost of living in the cities.