March 6, 2015

Delaware News

The News Journal
UD, Harker must recognize budget limitations
Opinion by Representative J.J. Johnson
President Harker missed the mark when he laid blame for his institution’s perennial tuition and fee increases at the feet of UD faculty and Delaware taxpayers.

Invest in education programs we know work
Editorial by the News Journal
Gov. Markell, the state Department of Labor, Delaware Tech several businesses and a number of state high schools have developed innovative programs to keep at-risk students in school, to give them a step up in acquiring technical certification and, soon, to provide them with apprenticeships that will give them deep training and move them into the workforce. That is a long-term crime-fighting program. We should invest in it.

Cape Gazette
Parents say first-grader bullied
Some Rehoboth Elementary parents say bullying is a problem at the school, and they’ve asked district officials to address the issue by reading a book to students. These parents are also upset because the district allowed parents of children in a first-grade class to opt out of the lesson.

National News

Education Week
Most Math curricula found to be out of sync with Common Core
The first round of a Consumer Reports-style review for instructional materials paints a dismal picture of the textbook-publishing industry’s response to new standards: Seventeen of 20 math series reviewed were judged as failing to live up to claims that they are aligned to the common core.

New look at suspension data pinpoints disparities
A detailed exploration of state- and local-level data on suspensions—broken down by elementary and secondary levels and into student subpopulations—shows both the progress some districts have made in reducing suspensions and pinpoints dramatic disparities where more work needs to be done, according to an advocacy group.

Forbes
Almost 40% of minority teens want tech careers, research finds
The lack of diversity in tech, both gender-based and racial, is a hot button issue. So, it should come as welcome news that a recent research survey found that three of the top ten desired careers among Black and Hispanic students from low to middle-income families were in the tech field

The New York Times
The U.S. needs more rigorous and selective teacher colleges
Opinion by Amanda Ripley, a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective and the author of “The Smartest Kids in the World — and How They Got That Way.”
If you elevate the teaching profession, people will trust teachers more and politicians will give them more autonomy — and even more pay.

Plain Dealer
Ohio won’t penalize districts for kids who opt out of state tests
Ohio won’t penalize school districts if large numbers of students skip this year’s state test, state Superintendent Richard Ross announced. A growing number of parents are pulling their kids out of new state tests this year as the state increases testing time and changes test providers.

The Hechinger Report
As a whole new kind of college emerges, critics fret over standards
Competency education offers credit for experience, but who decides? Critics worry whether competency-based education is growing too fast for standards to be set.