March 25, 2015

Delaware News

The News Journal
Debate delayed on fix for special-needs students
State lawmakers tabled legislation on Tuesday that attempts to improve how Delaware schools accommodate students with disabilities. The legislation failed to proceed toward a vote in the Delaware Senate after lawmakers complained it was moving too quickly and unfairly targets charter schools over traditional public schools.

Keep moving on school district changes
Editorial
For the first time in a long time, enough people – make that enough of the “right” people – are willing to change our schools in a way that something may actually change. Barring sporadic orders from the courts, Delaware has been slow to change many things about our schools, especially the boundaries. Now it appears that the time to make changes is near.

WHYY
The Delaware school testing rescue
Commentary by John Watson
It’s about time…finally, the state, districts and schools will be taking an inventory of all the different kinds of tests students take, and attempt to eliminate those that are redundant or ineffective.

WDEL
Sussex Tech senior collects 100K pairs of shoes for non-profit
Emma Rider collects shoes. But she’s not your typical woman–she’s not wearing them. She donates them to the non-profit organization Water Step, which funds safe drinking water projects around the world.

National News

The Hechinger Report
Common Core tests will widen achievement gap — at first
The Common Core was rolled out with the promise of raising expectations for American students and closing both the persistent learning gap and the achievement gap, as measured by test scores. But in the short term, at least, the achievement gap will almost certainly grow wider.

Inside Higher Ed
Alexander’s Higher Ed Act agenda
Sen. Lamar Alexander released three policy papers outlining ideas on making colleges share in the financial risk of the federal loans they provide students, overhauling accreditation and changing how the federal government collects data from colleges. The documents offer the most expansive look yet at Alexander’s priorities for rewriting the Higher Education Act, which he has said he wants the Senate to vote on by the end of 2015.

Education Week
Overhaul urged to aid Special Education in California
Members of a task force that spent two years studying special education in California used their final report to recommend sweeping changes to the state’s entire pre-K-12 system in hopes of improving achievement for students with disabilities.

New studies find that, for teachers, experience really does matter
The notion that teachers improve over their first three or so years in the classroom and plateau thereafter is deeply ingrained in K-12 policy discussions. But findings from a handful of recently released studies are raising questions about that proposition. In fact, they suggest the average teacher’s ability to boost student achievement increases for at least the first decade of his or her career—and likely longer.

What I learned from chorus
Blog post by Starr Sackstein
In addition to important life skills, chorus helped me to truly appreciate music. Few things make me feel as alive and connected as music. It fills an immeasurable role in my life. Whether hearing something emotional that evokes a response or singing with the windows down in the summer time, music has only great memories associated with it. As an education community, we need to make sure that all children have access to the arts as there are few other subjects that will provide such an appreciation.

The New York Times
Hillary Clinton caught between dueling forces on education: Teachers and wealthy donors
Already, she is being pulled in opposite directions on education. The pressure is from not only the teachers who supported her once and are widely expected to back her again, but also from a group of wealthy and influential Democratic financiers who staunchly support many of the same policies — charter schools and changes to teacher tenure and testing — that the teachers’ unions have resisted throughout President Obama’s two terms in office