July 31, 2014
Local News
The News Journal
We need to change Delaware’s school culture
An op-ed by Ronald Russo, former president of the Charter School of Wilmington and the former principal of St. Mark’s High School
Inside the school building, education is all about the kids and the professional relationship they have with their teachers. This is similar to the relationship between a doctor and a patient, or a lawyer and a client. But the overall operation of a doctor’s office or a law firm is a business. The same can be said about education. Once you begin to operate at the administrative level, good business practices come into play.
WDDE
Task force begins work to address First State teacher compensation
After sitting atop Gov. Jack Markell’s to-do list for the past two years, state lawmakers and officials are now looking at raising public teacher salaries. Rep. Harvey Kenton (R-Milford) called current salary levels “embarrassing”. Sen. Brian Pettyjohn (R-Georgetown) agreed, but says any solution will be tough in what looks like another tough budget year. “If the governor is really going to push this, he’s going to have to do a lot of legwork in selling this to the Joint Finance Committee and saying, ‘I’m willing to trade ‘x’ for higher teacher salaries.’”
WDEL
EdWatch: Red Clay uses videoconferencing to teach foreign language
Red Clay’s only Italian teacher is a busy woman, but Holly Schnittger maximizes her time by teaching the foreign language to McKean High School, A.I., and Conrad Schools of Science all at once. “It’s interactive, so it’s a distance learning lab so we’re on video conferencing with the kids for the whole entire period,” said Schnittger.
National News
New York Daily News
EXCLUSIVE: Second lawsuit challenging teacher tenure to be filed by group of New York families
In a suit filed in Albany on Monday, seven families charged that their children are underserved in schools due to incompetent teachers — who only kept their jobs because of tenure rules that violate the kids’ constitutional right to a sound education. The suit is backed by the politically connected journalist-turned-education advocate Campbell Brown.
Fast Company
Why the education economy is the next big thing for the American workforce
Though the economy and education have long been topics of top concern to Americans, we haven’t created strong linkages between the two. Yet there is nothing more important we can do as a country than to build the world’s most effective “educonomy.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Nixon: Worst Missouri legislative session for education in recent memory
Missouri’s 2014 legislative session was the “worst six months for public education in recent memory,” Gov. Jay Nixon said. The governor outlined several ways he said lawmakers put public education on the back burner, including the attempted fix to the school transfer law.
Huffington Post
The two realities facing education
There are two inescapable realities facing American education: the growing diversity of the nation’s students and the unrelenting demand for jobs that require employees to solve problems, innovate and adapt.
Education Week
Principals test entrepreneurial ideas in K-12
Negotiating lucrative partnerships with companies and organizations. Creating a brand and aggressively marketing it. Breaking with traditional operating methods. Taking risks. These are some of the strategies used by entrepreneurs operating in the business world—and, increasingly, they’re the kinds of approaches being used by K-12 principals to manage and run their schools.
Flashback: 1989 poll finds American public ‘Ready for national curriculum’
There we were, in 1989, with America rallying for national standards and curriculum. And here we are in 2014 with stories piling up about common-core backlash and states withdrawing from the shared standards—or the common tests—under political pressure. It seemed like a different world.