June 16, 2016

Delaware

Delaware Public Media
House committee blocks another Wilmington redistricting plan
The future is looking dim in the General Assembly for efforts to redraw Wilmington school district lines. A House committee tabled the third version of a bill to embrace moving city kids from the Christina to the Red Clay School District Wednesday.

Capital City Farmers’ Market home to free summer meals for kids
The Capital City Farmers’ Market in downtown Dover opened for the season Wednesday. In addition to offering the usual array of fresh and local produce, the market will also be a site for Delaware’s summer meals program, which provides free meals to all children under the age of 18.

Department of Education
Sites across Delaware offer free summer meals to children
Districts, charter schools and community partners across the state are ensuring children who rely on school food don’t go hungry this summer by providing free meals in their communities. The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), a federally funded program operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and managed locally by the Delaware Department of Education, targets children in low-income areas to ensure they have healthy meals during the summer.

Newark Post
Last day of school bittersweet for students moving on
As she said goodbye to friends Carly Britt and Tatyana Billingsley, Downes Elementary School fifth-grader Jessica Miller couldn’t help but wish she had another year left at the school. “I want to rip up my report card and go back,” she said, moments after walking out of Downes for the final time. “I wish I could stop time,” Carly added. “I feel happy and sad at the same time.”

Christina schools will see reduced class sizes but still no librarians
Following the passage of the March referendum, Christina School District schools will have smaller class sizes and more support staff next school year, though secondary schools will still be without librarians. On Tuesday night, district officials updated the Christina School District Board of Education on the progress made since the referendum passed three months ago.

The News Journal
Conrad Schools of Science sheds Redskins name
The mascot for the Conrad Schools of Science will no longer be the Redskins. In a close vote following more than an hour of public comment and discussion, the Red Clay school board struck the name from the district’s science magnet school. Whether or not the board would change the name was a highly contentious issue for the last year and a half because the sizable and active community of alumni from the old Conrad High School was loudly opposed to the change.

WDEL
Delaware Senate approves bill to start school year after Labor Day
The state Senate narrowly approved a bill requiring that school districts wait until after Labor Day to begin the school year. The measure cleared the Senate on an 11-to-10 vote Wednesday and now goes to the House. Supporters of the bill, which follows the majority recommendation of a task force that studied the issue, said it could provide an economic boost, allowing high school students to keep summer jobs longer and extending the summer tourism season into the Labor Day weekend.

National

American Enterprise Institute
Innovate and evaluate: Expanding the research base for competency-based education
Competency-based education (CBE) has garnered significant attention lately from reformers and policymakers. Put simply, CBE awards credit based on what students have learned rather than how much time they spend in class. Competency-based programs identify specific competencies, develop assessments to measure mastery of those competencies, and then award credit or other credentials to those students who meet or exceed benchmarks on those assessments.

Chalkbeat
Proposal may let teachers avoid unpopular requirement: being evaluated by outside observers
New York City teachers may not have to share their classrooms with “independent observers,” after all. Under new rules passed Monday, the city will be able to apply for a waiver that will allow it to bypass one of the most unpopular provisions of the state’s teacher evaluation law — the requirement that teachers and principals be evaluated by someone who doesn’t work at their school, starting in the 2016-17 school year.

Education Week
Minnesota high school designed for ‘flexibility’
Of all the terms used to describe Alexandria Area High School in Alexandria, Minn., one that comes up frequently is “flexible.” Perhaps the reason is because the $73.2 million, 283,000-square-foot structure set in this wealthy resort community in the middle of the state was designed with the rapid pace of technological change and the future of education in mind.

NJ.com
Thousands of N.J. high school students file appeals to graduate
After controversial changes to New Jersey’s high school graduation requirements, about five times as many students than last year have filed last-resort appeals to earn their diploma and at least hundreds more were still not eligible to graduate as of May 31, according to state data. The 10,323 portfolio appeals approved so far by the state Department of Education represent a sizable surge in the number of students using the appeals process.

The Hechinger Report
Elementary school teachers struggle with Common Core math standards
Cookies and math tend to go together in an elementary school classroom. And not always as reward for a correct answer. Teachers use them as conceptual props to explain an operation like division. It works intuitively enough with whole numbers. If you have 12 cookies and four friends, how can you give an equal number of cookies to each friend? The trouble with this standby analogy comes when you divide by a fraction.