June 8, 2017

Delaware News

Cape Gazette
Cape High graduates celebrate commencement
Cape High Principal Brian Donahue was fine until he read the last sentence of his letter to the graduating 2017 senior class. “The 2016-2017 school year has been amazing for all of us. We wish you the best as you continue on your journey to make all of your dreams come true,” he said.

Delaware State News
Lawmakers vote to abolish State Board of Education
The executive director of the Delaware Board of Education says she was caught off-guard by lawmakers voting to get rid of the group. The board was one of several casualties of May 30’s meeting of the Joint Finance Committee. While that action could still be undone it appears for now the long-standing group is going away.

Education Week
Reimagining professional learning in Delaware
Blog post by Stephanie Hirsh, executive director of Learning Forward
The people of Delaware have long looked for ways to make their state first and started that tradition by being the first state to join the union in 1787. In keeping with that history, they were among the first to adopt the Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning and certainly among the first to build a comprehensive redesigned learning system aligned to them.

Newark Post
Newark High grads ready to embrace change
For members of the Newark High School Class of 2017, the realization that they were actually graduating hit them all at different moments. For Lexus Christopher, the moment came during senior night for the volleyball team when she realized she was playing the sport for the last time.

National News

City Journal
School board shakeup in Los Angeles
Like many big-city school systems, the Los Angeles Unified School District is in disarray. On track for a graduation rate of 49 percent last June, the district instituted “a “credit-recovery plan,” which allows students to take crash courses on weekends and holidays to make up for classes they failed or missed. Combined with the elimination of the California High School Exit Examination, the classes, which many claimed were short on content, raised the district’s graduation rate to 75 percent practically overnight.

NPR
Asked about discrimination, Betsy DeVos said this 14 times
Over and over again, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos deflected a barrage of pointed questions with one answer: “Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law.” Appearing Tuesday before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, DeVos was asked repeatedly by lawmakers if, under a federal voucher program, she would prohibit private schools from discriminating against LGBTQ students and children with disabilities.

Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Wyoming Dept. of Education unveils new plan for CTE support
Wyoming teachers soon will have more support in offering career and technical education (CTE) to students. The Wyoming Department of Education currently is implementing Wyoming Service Implementation Matrix Process and Log (WyoSIMPL), a new system to provide support and resources to career and technical education teachers and administrators.

The Hechinger Report
New rankings place Mississippi at the top in preschool quality
Mississippi is one of only five states in the country to meet all ten quality standards for public preschool, according to a new report by The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). Only one of Louisiana’s three state-funded programs met all the standards. To determine the quality and availability of state-funded preschool, “The State of Preschool 2016” looked at access to public pre-K, enrollment, and quality benchmarks such as the educational level required of preschool teachers, class size and learning standards for every state, the District of Columbia and Guam.

The Washington Post
A new marker of success at graduation: The seal of biliteracy
Max Moss started studying Spanish in sixth grade and never stopped. He learned to speak the language, read it, and understand conversations. By the time he hit 12th grade, he knew enough to recite 13th-century poetry and write his senior thesis in Spanish. This week, as he graduates from high school, he will be among the first Maryland students recognized for his linguistic achievement under a new state program.