June 30, 2014

Local News

Milford Beacon
Milford Central Academy among four schools selected as Common Core demonstration sites
The Milford Central Academy is one of four Delaware schools that will serve as a demonstration site for Common Core State Standards. These schools will serve educators throughout the state in the coming years as a place to study the workings of research-based supports designed to ensure students meet the challenges of Common Core State Standards.

News Journal
Art camp helps kids build their portfolios
A dozen students from Prestige, an all-boys school that serves mostly low-income Wilmington students, spent last week learning about and making their own art. High school students from Charter School of Wilmington and Cab Calloway School of the Arts developed and led this camp to teacher Prestige students about art, but also how to build a portfolio and apply to future schools and educational programs.

Gearing up for a world competition
An editorial
Gov. Markell’s administration has been working with employers, especially with manufacturers, to deter me which skills are needed and the best way to get workers the required training. The Senate bill adds a boost to cooperation between industry and community colleges. Delaware Technical Community College already is involved with several industries, providing quick training turn-arounds when needed.

Support Delaware reading program
A letter to the editor by Gwen DelCoglin, New Castle
Read Aloud Delaware’s mission to ensure each preschool child in Delaware is regularly read to one-on-one highlights our goal to keep Delaware’s numbers where they need to be. As a volunteer reader, I see first-hand how the children love choosing the books, turning the pages and hearing the stories.

Organized exclusion of children of color
A commentary by Devon Hynson, Jr., Executive Director, Education Voices, Inc.
The public schools system’s history of exclusionary and discriminatory discipline practices has created a system of property maintenance circumvention. The saddest and most unfortunate result is this culture of mistreatment, which has graduated to the never expected assimilative levels. The assimilation has occurred to the extent that some colored people have actively and overtly become all too willing participants, in the organized school exclusion and criminalization of black students.

Some real Common Core problems
A letter to the editor by Frank Murray, Newark
Most criticisms of the proposed Common Core curriculum are unfounded. There are genuine problems with Common Core all the same, and these are potentially at a deeper level.

Missing occupancy deadline for Capital school
A letter to the editor by Margaret McKay, Dover
Congratulations and kudos to Ann Marie Townshend, director of planning for the city of Dover. She stood her professional ground and is enforcing the law that protects all of the citizens of Dover, especially our children, by holding the Capital School District Superintendent, Michael D. Thomas, accountable for the delays in receiving the certificate of occupancy for the new high school.

Cape Gazette
Survey: public schools have more detractors than promoters
An organization called Project 5000 Opinions did just such a survey between July and November in 2013. As it turns out, 44 percent of the respondents feel public schools are doing well, giving them a grade of A or B. Those with children in the school system or those who work in the school system give the schools the highest grades, with 65 percent of them grading their schools as A or B.

National News

Hartford Courant
Malloy announces plan to assist with Common Core
Calling it the “Connecticut Core Initiative,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced plans to follow recommendations made by a task force to help implement the Common Core State Standards.

Washington Post
MD groups to collaborate on evaluation process for teachers, principals
Maryland education officials, teachers unions and other education organizations signed a written agreement to collaborate on methods for assessing classroom effectiveness, a central element of the state’s evaluation system for teachers and principals.

Ed Tech Magazine
Schools mix one-to-one with a helping of BYOD
The Waxahachie Independent School District has embraced a full-blown one-to-one strategy, in which each student has a notebook computer or tablet for accessing online information. In order to get technology into students’ hands without breaking the bank, WISD took a hybrid approach to one-to-one: Some students use devices provided by the district, while others use their own.

Chalkbeat Colorado
Lawsuit claims school funding reduction mechanism unconstitutional
A group of school districts and parents filed a lawsuit Friday arguing that the device used by the legislature to control annual K-12 spending, the so-called negative factor, is unconstitutional. The suit has been expected for some time and opens a new front in the policy war over the negative factor, a conflict that intensified during the 2014 legislative session. It’s estimated that use of the negative factor has cut about $1 billion a year from what school districts otherwise would have received for basic operating costs.

WNCN
NC House OKs charter school discrimination ban
The state House approved a measure that broadly bans discrimination against charter school applicants based on their sexual orientation or other federally and constitutionally protected classes.

Wall Street Journal
Surprising findings on two-year vs. four-year degrees
As states for the first time mine graduates’ salary data from public colleges, they are finding that paychecks for holders of associate degrees in a technical field are outstripping many grads with four-year degrees, at least early in a career.