June 12, 2014
Local News
WDEL
School’s out and summer learning loss sets in
School’s out for summer, but that doesn’t mean learning should end. “We need to look at how our school systems are utilizing their funding, how they are utilizing summer opportunities,” said Secretary Mark Murphy. Murphy says the paradigm of a 10-month school year may be outdated, and it’s important to note that children need our help 12 months out of the year.
The News Journal
New apartments coming to downtown Wilmington
The Buccini/Pollin Group plans to open more than 250 apartments in downtown Wilmington and the city’s Riverfront during the next year or so. Mike Hare, Buccini/Pollin’s senior vice president, said the three-building project will be geared toward providing housing for the teachers who will work for charter schools coming to downtown Wilmington.
Charter school vouchers are no solution
A letter to the editor by Deborah McCann, Newark
While charters skim from students whose parents are involved enough to meet application requirements and deadlines, the effect is a changing demographic in the regular public school, where PTA meeting attendance in some now can be counted on one’s fingers, and parent conferences are barely attended. How can this not impact school culture, teaching and learning?
Hockessin Community News
Alexis I. DuPont teacher named RCCSD ‘Teacher of the Year’
Alexis I. DuPont High School teacher Tami Soltow has been named Red Clay Consolidated School District’s Teacher of the Year. “She’s the real deal,” Daugherty said. “The enthusiasm she brings, the involvement she has with the students, working with Special Olympics – she is someone we want every teacher to be a reflection of.”
National News
The Christian Science Monitor
Common Core gets support from higher education
More than 200 higher-education leaders have created a new organization to voice their support for Common Core, the controversial state-based educational-standards system.
Real Clear Education
Much ado about a phantom: Education brouhaha over test-and-punish is a state of mind, not state of reality
In education, virtually nothing is less popular than standardized tests. But for Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond and AFT President Randi Weingarten, there is one thing: accountability for standardized tests. And today’s Stanford Center on Opportunity Policy in Education’s “Rethinking Accountability” conference is a megaphone for their call, previewed in The Huffington Post, to shift from NCLB-style “test-and-punish” accountability to a system built on “support-and-improve.”
Albuquerque Journal
New Mexico’s colleges to be evaluated in 2015
New Mexico will begin issuing report cards for the state’s six colleges of education in an effort to graduate better teachers.
Education Week
‘Posses’ keep students on academic track
Posse Foundation founder Deborah Bial first got the idea for the peer-group approach to college when she was working at a nonprofit, after-school leadership program in New York City in 1989. One of her students returned from college saying he wouldn’t have dropped out if he’d had his posse with him.
Major policy shifts, economic forces shape the ed-tech market
Researchers and industry groups studying the education technology market say they now see a growing demand for ed-tech products, an uptick that has followed a prolonged period of lean budgets at the state and local levels.