January 25, 2016

Delaware

Department of Education
Acting U.S. Secretary of Education highlights state work in visit
Acting U.S. Secretary of Education John King praised Delaware as an “inspiring” leader in education during a visit to Wilmington today as part of his Opportunity Across America Tour. Following a visit to Kuumba Academy Charter School, King joined Gov. Jack Markell and Delaware Secretary of Education Steven Godowsky for a round table discussion with other education and state leaders about improving assessments and ensuring access to high quality education for all students.

Delaware Public Media
March referendums slated for three school districts in state
March 23rd is turning out to be a “Super Wednesday” of sorts for voters in three Delaware school districts – Cape Henlopen, Brandywine, and Christina. For the third time in just over a year, the Christina School District will ask residents to approve a tax hike to help hire back teachers and pay school bills. The district made major budget cuts last year after residents voted down two tax referendums in a row.

New federal Ed. Sec. talks student testing with Delaware officials
Acting Secretary of Education John King met with Delaware policymakers and educators on Friday morning in Wilmington. Gov. Jack Markell, Sen. Tom Carper and representatives from several school districts participated in the roundtable discussion, which focused almost entirely on student assessments.

NewsWorks
New U.S. Education chief visits Delaware to talk testing
The nation’s highest education official visited Delaware Thursday to address one of the state’s hottest education issues–standardized testing. Acting U.S. Secretary of Education, John King, stopped in Wilmington to praise the state’s new testing inventory, an effort to catalog and eventually reduce the number of standardized tests students take.

Instead of a Hail Mary, Delaware’s State Board of Education punts
With a well-thought-out, 200-page game plan in hand on Thursday, Delaware’s State Board of Education had a chance to make a big play, to start a long drive designed to lead to an equitable education system for low-income and English-language-learning students in Wilmington … and ultimately throughout the entire state. Huddled around the massive tables in the Cabinet Room, board member Terry Whittaker called the first play – a motion to accept the plan prepared by the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission (WEIC).

The Hechinger Report
Acting U.S. Secretary of Education speaks out in a state where anti-testing backlash looms
During his final stop this week on a tour of schools in four states and the District of Columbia, the acting U.S. Secretary of Education, John B. King Jr., defended the importance of academic achievement testing. The “Opportunity Across America Tour” brought him Friday to Delaware, a state that was in the national spotlight in 2010 when it earned more than $119 million in federal funding to reform its public schools. The nation’s second-smallest state was among the first – along with Hawaii and Oregon – to use computers for adaptive academic achievement tests, which change the difficulty of questions based on how a student performs.

The Milford Beacon
Acting U.S. Secretary of Education visits Wilmington to discuss assessments
Acting U.S. Secretary of Education John King visited Wilmington yesterday to discuss the status of education and assessment in Delaware. His visit, which was a part of his Opportunity Across America Tour, had him stop by the Kumba Academy Charter School. He also joined Gov. Jack Markell and Delaware Secretary of Education Steven Godowsky for a roundtable discussion on improving assessments and ensuring access to high quality education for all students.

The News Journal
‘Our time is now’: Cape sets referendum date
Cape Henlopen School District taxpayers will head to the polls on March 23 to vote on a $48.1 million referendum that would rebuild or renovate the district’s four elementary schools. The referendum calls for funding to construct new buildings at the sites of H.O. Brittingham and Rehoboth elementary schools, while Richard A. Shields and Milton elementary schools would be renovated, keeping much of the historical integrity of the buildings intact.

Nation’s education leader talks testing in Delaware visit
Standardized tests are important for teachers and vital to policymakers, but states need to listen to parents’ and teachers’ concerns about over-testing, Acting U.S. Secretary of Education John King said in a visit to Wilmington on Friday. “Assessments are an essential tool,” King said. “But they have to be smart. And we have to be smart about how we use them.”

National

The American Prospect
Acting Education Secretary champions economic, racial integration
When President Barack Obama recently tapped former New York State education commissioner John B. King, Jr. to replace Arne Duncan as secretary of education, the move was seen as a vote for continuity. The two men share views on most hot-button education issues: the Common Core, teacher accountability, and charter schools. But King may be poised to champion a new issue not emphasized by his predecessor—or any other education secretary in recent memory: combating racial and economic segregation.

The Guardian
Locality, locality, locality – That’s where the good schools are best
Sadly, there is no shortage of evidence on the gap in attainment between poorer and more affluent children, and last week’s league tables showed that gap had grown for the third year in a row. Increasingly sophisticated data reveals gaps reflecting gender and ethnicity as well. So Nick Clegg’s recent speech on equality in education largely rehearsed what we already know. Its new angle, though, is the claim that regional differences have increased in recent years – and that these matter, too.

The New York Times
Over 200 educators in New York receive enormous scores linked to student performance
More than 200 teachers and principals received erroneous scores from New York State on a contentious measurement that ties their performance to how well their students do on tests, according to state documents obtained by The New York Times. The error, which affected a small percentage of scores for the 2014-15 academic year, could be another blow to the practice of linking educator performance to student exams, a system that has come under fire in recent years.

The Philadelphia Inquirer
P.A. bill clouds of Keystone exams
The state Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would delay using Keystone Exams as a high school graduation requirement and study whether the proficiency tests should be a graduation requirement at all. The plan, which passed the Senate unanimously, would set the 2018-19 school year as the earliest to make the exams a graduation benchmark. In addition, within six months of the act’s becoming law, the Department of Education would be asked to “investigate and develop alternatives” to the tests, according to the bill.

The Seattle Times
Hundreds fill Seattle’s town hall to talk education and equity
Public discussion about education is often relegated to policy debates, funding conundrums and political positioning. In a word, it can be dry. But no one leaving Town Hall last Thursday night would have used that adjective. More than 350 students, teachers, parents and education officials filled the meeting space for a boisterous series of five-minute talks on everything from socially relevant math lessons to segregated schools. The event, Ignite Education Lab, was sponsored by The Seattle Times and presented 11 speakers culled from 79 applications.