June 9, 2014

Local News

The News Journal
Proposed fund would give parents school cash
Called the “Parent Empowerment Education Savings Account Act,” HB 353 would allow parents to place a percentage of the per-student funding that goes to a public school into accounts with the state treasurer’s office. They could then spend the money from those accounts on whatever educational purposes they choose, as long as they do not enroll their student in a public school.

We’re kicking boys out of school before kindergarten
An op-ed by DeWayne Wickham, dean of Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication
For far too many young blacks who come from single-parent homes, school expulsion can be an early step into the pipeline that funnels black youngsters from school to prison. Expelling black preschoolers can create an emotional scarring from which they never recover. At the very least, it pushes them further behind the learning curve and closer to dropping out of school.

Dover Post
New Lake Forest super looks forward to Delaware return
After a year of dealing with controversy as the head of a school district in Pennsylvania, the newly-hired superintendent of the Lake Forest School District says he’s looking forward to coming back to the First State, where his career first began. Conway was hired by Lake Forest last month to succeed current superintendent Dan Curry, who will retire at the end of the month.

National News

State Impact
Ohio bucks trend, sticks with new standards
Ohio’s legislature, which is heavily Republican, reaffirmed the math and English standards it adopted along with 43 other states and the District of Columbia.

Duncan looks to end students’ ‘summer slide’
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan believes that much of what students learn during the school year slips away during the long summer break, and a solution is needed.

Education Week
Costs, quality on radar as dual enrollment rises
As dual-enrollment programs surge in popularity, policymakers and advocates are wrestling with how to pay the costs and promote access for all high school students who are eligible to earn college credit, especially low-income and minority populations.

California’s CORE districts faltering on key tenets of waiver, Ed. Dept. says
The California districts that won a special reprieve from portions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act are falling short on several key pieces of their waiver agreement, and, in some areas, made major changes to their plan without first getting permission from the U.S. Department of Education.

Confessions of an assessment field-tester
A commentary by Carol Lloyd, Executive Editor at GreatSchools
A month ago, I went online to do the practice questions for both major common-core assessment consortia—Smarter Balanced and PARCC (the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers)—for her grade. Many of the questions were difficult but wonderful. Others were in need of a good editor. A few, however, were flat-out wrong.

Inside Higher Education
ACT makes series of minor tweaks
ACT is unveiling a series of changes — most involving the addition of new scores — to its college admissions test.