July 9, 2014

Local News

Sussex Countian
New Castle County Head Start centers receive top rating
The New Castle County Head Start Bear, Lambson, Marshallton and Rose Hill centers all received a five-star rating from the Delaware Department of Education. Delaware Stars for Early Success is Delaware’s quality rating system, with level five being the highest level of achievement.

The News Journal
Younger workers can revitalize unions
An editorial
The idea of aging union workers fading into glory after decades of holding down the same job is trending in another direction. And it has much to do with the growing, younger, more technologically agile worker base that’s becoming available. Yes, millennials are posed to shake up an aging worker-employer compact that’s controlled and supported most of the nation’s blue-collar labor force since the mid-19th century.

National News

Education Week
Arne Duncan unveils 50-state teacher-equity strategy
The U.S. Department of Education Monday detailed its long-awaited “50-state” strategy for putting some teeth into a requirement of the 12-year-old No Child Left Behind Act that has gone largely unenforced up until now: ensuring that poor and minority students get access to as many great teachers as their more advantaged peers.

Tennessee on dogged path to Race to Top finish
In March, the Obama administration began raising the victory flag, calling Race to the Top a success and pointing to Tennessee—one of the 11 states and the District of Columbia that split the $4 billion competitive-grant fund—as a bright, shiny example of how incentive-based contests can right a distressed education system. But the impact of Race to the Top on the state is more complicated than the U.S. Department of Education suggests.

Cash drew contractor expertise – and controversy
When Congress approved Race to the Top as part of the federal economic-stimulus package in 2009, it created a $4 billion fund states could tap—if they put together winning competitive-grant applications. Most states lacked the expertise or capacity to craft a strong proposal themselves, so they hired consulting firms to do it for them.

Asbury Park Press
NJ Senate to vote Thursday on slowing Common Core
The state Senate has scheduled a vote on legislation that establishes an Education Review Task Force to analyze the Common Core standards, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments and the use of students’ test results in evaluating teachers.

NPR
What we don’t know about summer school
It’s really hard to get a head count — either nationally or at the district level — of how many kids are going to summer school. What, exactly, is summer school? How much does it cost? And, the biggest question, does it work? In a nutshell, we have no idea.

US News
How to fix America’s college remediation issue
More students than ever are graduating from high school, but a significant portion are told they aren’t ready for college-level studies. Remedial education at the college level is by no means a new issue, but it’s one that both K-12 and higher education leaders are still working to solve.