February 29, 2016

Delaware

Coastal Point
District needs new schools to address overcrowding
Students are squeezed into conference rooms and shuffled into auditoriums. Teachers are working out of boxes instead of classrooms. The Indian River School District just needs more space. District officials have dreamed about a new school for several years, but now they’ve got four new schools on the brain, plus two major additions. At almost weekly meetings, an IRSD Futures Committee has come to envision two additional elementary schools, one new middle school, a replacement Howard T. Ennis School and expansions to Indian River and Sussex Central high schools.

Delaware Public Media
Survey results show support for Common Core in first state schools
About two-thirds of the state’s public school teachers have “quite a bit” or “fully” embraced the new Common Core curriculum standards, a survey conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education indicates. But, according to the survey and interviews with a small sampling of teachers, support for the new standards, which have been adopted in most of the nation, doesn’t mean that teachers’ work has gotten any easier. Results of the survey, taken in early 2015 by teachers and principals in Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Mexico and Nevada, were released earlier this month.

Delaware State News
Say it loud and proud: Educators host ‘I Love Smyrna School District Day’
While each teaching facility is bound to have their own family and friends within its halls, the annual I Love Smyrna School District Day worked to bring all eight Smyrna School District institutions together under one roof. As about 7,000 people filtered in and out of the doors of Smyrna High School, the Smyrna School District created more connections within their community for the 18th consecutive year. On February 27, the residents of Smyrna and its surrounding areas joined together to celebrate the annual I Love Smyrna School District day.

Sussex County Post
Indian River: Concern is building amid enrollment growth, overcrowding
For some time the Indian River School District has experienced growing pains. The district’s student enrollment as of Sept. 30, 2015 topped 10,000 – the first time in district history. Indian River’s district-wide tally was 10,171. That was an increase of 329 students from the 9,843 on Sept. 30, 2014. The school district’s Futures Committee has had ongoing discussion focused on possible solutions to address overcrowding via possible expansion and new construction. The committee has developed a series of option plans.

The Hunt Institute
Delaware report offers guidelines to reduce remediation, improve college preparedness
The Delaware Department of Education released this month, the 2016 Delaware College Success Report. The report shows that the state has seen an overall reduction in remediation rates since 2012, but nearly half of Delaware’s public high school graduates who attend in-state college still must take at least one remedial course before taking credit-bearing courses toward their degrees. Many students across the country are graduating high school unprepared for the level of rigor necessary in a college course.

The Milford Beacon
Brain games head to DSU for Science Olympiad
Students from across the state are polishing their test tubes and reviewing biology notes in preparation for the annual Science Olympiad at Delaware State University March 5. These scientifically-inclined students will show their mastery in topics ranging from engineering, astronomy, chemistry to biology. Some of the events will test their critical thinking and analytical skills, while others will test building and engineering skills. Camden’s Caesar Rodney High School team is looking forward to the portion of the competition where memorization is key. Kush Patel, 18, is a co-captain of the team. He said this is where the team shines.

The News Journal
Delaware teens compete for poetry prize
Hannah Sturgis, 16, started reading William Shakespeare’s poetry in the third grade and Emily Dickinson’s in the fifth grade. “I didn’t understand it,” she said with a laugh after winning the state-wide Poetry Out Loud competition Tuesday night. It’s the second year in a row that she’s won the recitation contest, which trots high school students in brand new blouses and oxford shirts across the Smyrna Opera House stage as they recite poems from the well-known to the much more modern. She came in third in the contest.

Distrust blocks school redistricting
If a historic redistricting of Wilmington schools ultimately fails, it could come down to one thing: distrust. Few will argue the city’s current system – which scatters its students among several districts and frequently buses them miles out to the suburbs – has lived up to the goals of educational equality hoped for in the desegregation fight that created it in 1981. The Wilmington Education Improvement Commission has gotten closer to making systemic change than any effort since the civil rights era.

National

CT Post
Connecticut to shorten SBAC test
In response to critics who say the state’s mandated standardized test eats up too much instructional time, the exam is being trimmed by as much as 90 minutes. The language arts section of the exam will be cut in half by eliminating an essay students have been required to write, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced on Thursday. The state started giving the six-hour, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test to public school students in grades 3 through 8 last year to determine how well they were learning language arts and math under Common Core curriculum standards.

The Atlantic
Trapped in the community college remedial maze
A majority of students with A and B grade point averages in high school still require developmental education at the community-college level, raising new questions about the skill level of incoming college students and the ways institutions measure their abilities. This is especially worrisome for students of color given that half of Hispanic college students and nearly a third of black college students start their higher-education paths at community colleges.

The New York Times
Poor scores leave an Afrocentric school in Chicago vulnerable
Test scores suggest that the Barbara A. Sizemore Academy, an African-centered school, is struggling mightily. Its students in third through eighth grades scored in only the 14th percentile in reading on national achievement tests last year and in the eighth percentile in math. Those statistics have prompted the Chicago Public Schools to recommend closing Sizemore. But here in a South Side neighborhood riddled with crime, blight and poverty, where the black experience can seem like a constant struggle, Sizemore’s many supporters argue that their students’ success is measured by much more than test scores.

The Washington Post
As a KIPP supporter, this new book about charter schools is hard to believe
Jim Horn is the most vocal critic of our nation’s (and the District’s) largest nonprofit charter school network, KIPP. Among journalists, I am KIPP’s most enthusiastic supporter. That makes me an odd judge of Horn’s new book on KIPP and schools like it, “Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys Through ‘No Excuses’ Teaching.” But I think he deserves attention as a hard-working scholar and talented writer who brings together, from several sources, concerns about the rapid growth of charter schools similar to KIPP. I wish the book were not so one-sided.

U.S. Department of Education
U.S. Department of Education recognizes 13 states and 40 districts committing to #GoOpen with educational resources
Press Release
The U.S. Department of Education today announced the launch of 13 statewide #GoOpen initiatives committed to supporting school districts and educators as they transition to the use of high-quality, openly-licensed educational resources in their schools. This inaugural cohort of #GoOpen states joins leaders from an expanding number of #GoOpen districts and innovative platform providers in setting a vision and creating the environment where educators and students can access the tools, content and expertise necessary to thrive in a connected world.