March 16, 2015

Delaware News

The News Journal
Competitions showcase students’ technical skills
Up and down Delaware over the past few months, students have been participating in competitions covering almost 70 kinds of technical skills.

Opting out is not a viable option
We must remember that the Smarter Balanced assessment is supposed to be a measuring stick – not a whip to induce pain on our children and teachers. We need a means to see how we compare with others. If we use this measuring stick correctly, then we can make the necessary changes to our educational system, ensure that we provide the necessary resources, and above all provide the best opportunities for each and every child to succeed.

Standardized testing divides us, let’s unite
After decades of testing at all levels, with different standards, methods, benchmarks and outcomes, the answer to that question is not what we thought it would be. Overwhelming numbers of scholars, parents, statisticians and legislators are starting to realize, with evidence, that standardized testing and the policies that flow from testing are doing more harm than good.

Delaware State News
Young programmers operate by their own code
At Towne Point Elementary School on Friday morning, kids were playing computer games, but they weren’t goofing off. They were learning to write computer code.

WDDE
State seeks to hold Delaware’s charter schools to ‘you deliver or you close’ standard
New management in the state Department of Education’s Charter Schools Office and the introduction of a new application for proposed schools and a performance framework for reviewing expiring charters has forced charter operators to pay more attention to detail — in academics, in finances and in school management.

WHYY
University of Delaware appoints interim president
The University of Delaware has named an interim president to replace outgoing leader Patrick Harker. Nancy Targett, the current dean of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at UD, will take over on July 1 and serve until the school finds a permanent replacement.

Cape Gazette
Effort to reduce school testing launched
Calling for the elimination of repetitive and ineffective assessments, Gov. Jack Markell has launched a review of tests administered by the state, districts, and individual schools with the goal of decreasing the testing burden on students and teachers and increasing the time available for teaching.

National News

The Philadelphia Inquirer
School-funding system ‘broken,’ Pa. judges hear
Pennsylvania’s system of education funding is broken, and the courts must force lawmakers to make it right, attorneys for school districts, parents and organizations that have sued the commonwealth told a panel of judges. The lawsuit argues that Pennsylvania’s education funding system is “irrational and inequitable.”

The Washington Post
In 23 states, richer school districts get more local funding than poorer districts
Children who live in poverty come to school at a disadvantage, arriving at their classrooms with far more intensive needs than their middle-class and affluent counterparts. But in 23 states, state and local governments are together spending less per pupil in the poorest school districts than they are in the most affluent school districts.

WXLT
Common Core Standards dead in South Carolina
The South Carolina Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday afternoon to replace the Common Core Standards now being used in math and English, killing Common Core in the state. The board adopted new standards, written by teams of South Carolinians, which teachers will start using this fall.

Education Week
Regardless of their titles, CAOs set tone for academics
As the pressure to raise student achievement has intensified, many school systems have responded by assigning a single administrator to oversee that difficult work—an individual whose exact title, duties, and status within the K-12 chain of command varies from district to district.

Schools chief taps industry to bring rich career experiences to students
District officials studied a variety of career and technical education programs, but had doubts about whether those approaches would do enough to connect students with professional careers and direct, workplace experiences. So they decided to build their own program from the ground up, beginning a process that would culminate in the opening of CAPS in 2009.