January 6, 2016

Delaware

Education Week
With ESSA passage, Delaware offers lessons
Commentary by Paul Herdman, President and CEO of the Rodel Foundation and leadership team member of the Vision Coalition
If we want to address early learning systemically, fundamentally redesign a funding system, strengthen the teaching profession, or re-evaluate the delivery of education via personalization, we need a consistent vision that is owned by the public and private stakeholders and that can endure multiple political cycles. While public-private partnerships exist in many states, the breadth and longevity of one particular state coalition is pretty unusual: that of Delaware. Here are five lessons that may be helpful to other states entering this new world of federal devolution.

New K-12 law adds to buzz as legislatures set to convene
Legislators let out a collective sigh of relief when President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act last month and with the 2016 state legislative season about to begin in 46 states, lawmakers throughout the country will be looking closely at that opening as they wrestle with a range of K-12 issues. In Delaware, a special commission is expected to deliver to the state’s board of education a report that will recommend fundamental changes to the state’s funding formula, which has gone largely unchanged since the early 1940s. The state faces a $100 million deficit this year.

Middletown Transcript
School district to hold town hall meeting to discuss enrollment growth, facilities
The Appoquinimink School District will hold a town hall meeting on Thursday to discuss the recent increase in student enrollment and its impact on school facilities and planning. The meeting is open to the public and will take place on Jan. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Alfred Waters Middle School, 1235 Cedar Lane Road in Middletown.

NewsWorks
Delaware charter work sue to stay open
A Delaware charter school facing closure won’t sue the state to remain open, the school’s board chair tells NewsWorks/WHYY. Delaware Met board chair Jeffrey Bross said the decision not to sue was made late last week after extended consultation with lawyers. The charter high school in Wilmington will close on January 22, just months after it opened, and students will have to finish the school year elsewhere.

The News Journal
Mid-year refresh for some Delaware schoolkids
Some of the kids at the William “Hicks” Anderson Community Center in Wilmington are getting fresh school supplies for the second half of the year. Volunteers from Bank of America and various city departments put together packages of crayons, notebooks and other elementary-school fare for the kids. Each package also had a journal and a personal note of encouragement from the volunteer because the packages were part of an initiative from the Jefferson Awards Foundation.

National

Education Week
Ambitious student-data-privacy law in California attracts national attention
Guest blog post by Leo Doran
Educators and policymakers around the country will be keeping a close eye on an ambitious suite of K-12 data-privacy measures that went into effect Jan. 1 in California. The law primarily aims to prevent third-party contractors from selling student data for advertising purposes, and restricts vendors from creating profiles of students for any non-educational purpose.

High stakes in union-fee case before Supreme Court
The face of the movement seeking to upend the public-employee labor sector has had a back-and-forth relationship with her own local teachers’ union. Rebecca Friedrichs, the lead plaintiff among a small group of California teachers whose case goes before the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 11, started her teaching career in a small school district in Orange County by refusing to join the local union. Later, she joined the union and even became an officer. The main legal question in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (Case No. 14-915) is whether a key Supreme Court precedent authorizing such agency-fee arrangements should be overruled.

NewsWorks
Outsourcing substitute duties burdens Philly teachers, students
The Philadelphia School District took a big risk last summer. In an attempt to boost the number of substitute teachers willing to come to its schools, it decided to outsource the service to a private firm, Source4Teachers. Through the first four months of classes, that decision has proved to be extremely unwise – causing an uproar at many schools across the city and calling into question the viability of academic offerings.

The Hechinger Report
An award-winning teacher explains why PARCC, Smarter Balanced are the kind of test students should take
Opinion by Josh Parker, instructional coach at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School and 2013 NEA foundation Global Fellow
This fall, I had the opportunity to participate in research conducted by the National Network of State Teachers of the Year. Alongside more than 25 State Teacher of the Year Award recipients and finalists, we compared PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments to several states’ former tests. Our review concluded in near unanimity that these new assessments are of higher quality than those they replaced and that they better measure student understanding.

The Tennessean
Teachers make teacher diversity a priority
Tennessee officials are taking a deeper look at teacher preparation programs in a bid to address the lack of diversity among the state’s teaching candidates The majority of candidates statewide this year completing a teacher preparation program — 85 percent — are white. And a third of all students completing programs hold a degree in elementary education.