May 19, 2014

Local News

The News Journal
Brown v. Board, 60 years later: Are we better off?
The goal of the ruling 60 years ago was to provide equal educational opportunities to all students. In Delaware, that meant forced busing, which after a lengthy fight through much of the 1970s, began in the fall of 1978. Thirty-six years later, schools have slowly slid back toward separation, and black students are still far more likely than white students to struggle academically and drop out of school.

Delaware’s ties to Brown decision strong, unique
Most people know the Brown v. Board of Education decision is one of the most seminal Supreme Court cases in American history, but fewer know how closely Delaware is tied to its story. When the Supreme Court heard Brown, it was actually dealing with combined lawsuits from Kansas, Washington D.C., South Carolina and Virginia and Delaware.

Looking back: Busing in Wilmington
A photo gallery

Restoration of Hockessin Colored School #107C moves ahead
The Friends of Hockessin Colored School #107 – a nonprofit group launched two years ago with a grant from the African American Empowerment Fund –are making plans to restore Hockessin School 107C. “I’ve always felt it was bigger than Delaware,” said Tony Allen, a board member and Bank of America executive. “It was not just a significant Delaware moment, it was a significant national moment. It deserves our attention, our support, our praise, and it is our responsibility to pass the story along to our children.”

What the Brown decision should mean, 60 years later
An op-ed by Stefan Lallinger, grandson of Louis L. Redding, and middle school principal at the Langston Hughes Academy in New Orleans
In 1954, Louis L. Redding achieved one of the great triumphs of his prolific career, arguing before the Supreme Court and winning the landmark case of modern American history, Brown vs. Board of Education. But it was much more than a milestone in his career, for Louis Redding didn’t become a Civil Rights attorney to achieve personal victories. I know this because he was my grandfather.

Sixty years after Brown and still a long way to go
An op-ed by Jeff Raffel, Helen Foss and Joseph Rosenthal were all involved in the desegregation effort in New Castle County dating back to the early 1970s. They are also current or former board members of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, which continues to work to fulfill the promise of Brown
Many have now recognized that the United States will need all its citizens to succeed in school to remain a prosperous democracy in the decades ahead. Most significantly, Brown was as much about ending America’s Jim Crow – a system which stigmatized and demeaned one race – as it was about improving educational opportunity for African-Americans. The Brown decision was not the end, but the beginning, of our challenge.

A movement to desegregate resonates decades later
An op-ed by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland
Fifty-five years ago, in a small county southwest of Richmond, Virginia, a law was broken. The Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors stood its ground against Brown v. Board of Education – the landmark Supreme Court decision that, in part, required schools to desegregate. Many from around the nation regarded this as an outrage and a disgrace – both for Virginia and for the country. Among them were the man elected president the following November, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert Kennedy.

Edison’s chess team wins national tourney
One of the best young chess teams in America comes from an inner-city school in Wilmington. Four students from Thomas Edison Charter School tied for first place among 600 teams and 2,200 students from all over the country at the Elementary Chess Championship in Dallas, Texas, last weekend. They faced off against 35 teams and a total of some 230 students.

WDDE
Freire Charter seeks to duplicate Philly model in First State
In the summer of 2015, Freire will bring its no-frills college prep curriculum and its uncompromising nonviolent student behavior policy to Wilmington, where it hopes to replicate the formula for success that it has developed in Philadelphia.

National News

The Associated Press
On 60th anniversary, a look at inequality
Saturday marked the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Many inequities in education still exist for black students and for Hispanics, a population that has grown exponentially since the 1954 ruling.

Real Clear Education
What Advanced Placement means for the future of American education and Common Core
But when it comes to education reform, there’s one approach that’s proved largely successful: The Advanced Placement program. The AP program is run by the College Board and allows students to earn college credit in high school. A couple decades ago, the program began with just a few schools. Over the years, growth in the program has been massive, and AP exams are being administered to millions of high schoolers around the country this week.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Missouri looks set to allow state preschool funding
The Missouri Legislature sent a bill to provide delayed and limited state funding for public preschool programs to the governor on the final day of the session.

Education Week
A top Gates Foundation official leaving for NewSchools Venture Fund
Stacey Childress, who has helped direct the flow of many millions of dollars in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to school projects nationwide, is leaving that post to join a well-known investment philanthropy focused on education. Childress will become the chief executive officer of the NewSchools Venture Fund, an Oakland, Calif.-based organization that raises capital from institutions and individuals to support education entrepreneurs.

Fewer than 40 Percent of seniors are prepared for college, NAEP analysis finds
The governing board for NAEP concludes in a new analysis that only 39 percent of 12th graders are prepared for entry-level college courses in math and just 38 percent are ready in reading. The announcement comes a week after a fresh set of National Assessment of Educational Progress data, for 2013, showed no change in high school seniors’ average scores in either reading or math, as compared with 2009, when 12th graders were last tested.

Court: N.C. anti-tenure law is unconstitutional
A North Carolina superior-court judge has ruled that a 2013 law dismantling the state’s system of granting “career status” for teachers is unconstitutional.

What the NAEP data tell us about seniors’ interests and experiences
The latest NAEP report for 12th graders doesn’t just supply scores and achievement levels in reading and math. It also delves into some of the “contextual factors” around achievement—that is, students’ opinions and experiences related to learning. There were questions about whether students liked math and reading, the highest level math course they had taken, and whether they discussed reading interpretations in class.