May 19, 2017

Delaware News

Coastal Point
Parents ready to fight for Spanish Immersion
Parents are lining up to defend the Spanish Immersion program against potential budget cuts in the Indian River School District. Expect signs. Expect small children making speeches in multiple languages. Expect a full 30 minutes of public comments at the school board meeting on May 22, at 7 p.m. at Indian River High School. The school board has promised to review the entire budget, line by line.

Smyrna-Clayton Sun-Times
Summer math lessons can prevent loss of months of knowledge
Summer learning loss is a phenomenon parents and educators have long acknowledged as a significant setback to academic achievement. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, math proficiency is particularly susceptible to the summer learning slide. Students lose two to two-and-a-half months of the math computational skills they learned during the school year.

Cape Gazette
Mariner Middle’s Corbin Bean named Cape teacher of the year
Mariner Middle’s Corbin Bean took honors as the top teacher for Cape Henlopen School District during a ceremony May 10. Bean will represent Cape Henlopen School District for the state teacher of the year ceremony held in the fall. He will compete against 20 other teachers of the year from school districts across the state. Bean teaches seventh-grade science and social studies, and he enjoys teaching with spontaneity, he said.

UDaily
Teaching children to save
While saving money may sound like an adult goal, saving habits can begin to form as early as elementary school. Just ask Delaware Gov. John Carney: At a recent event at Georgetown Elementary School, Carney shared some of his earliest saving experiences with students. “I remember when my mom and dad got me a savings account at the local bank,” said Carney, who described saving his childhood paper route earnings.

Technical.ly Delaware
These Delaware teachers are helping students spot fake news
Can you spot fake news? Thanks to President Donald Trump, the term, used to describe the spreading of misinformation through traditional media channels as well as a way for those in power to question the credibility of news sources that report stories they disagree with, has gained popularity. According to an article by Newsworks, local high school and college educators have taken on the task of teaching their students how to spot fake news.

National News

Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan
South Dakota Board Of Education adopts new content standards in CTE career clusters
The South Dakota Board of Education adopted new career and technical education standards in six career clusters at its meeting May 15. New standards include Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources; Arts, Audio-Video Technology and Communications; Finance; Health Science; Human Services; and Manufacturing.

NPR
Lessons from the nation’s oldest voucher program
Milwaukee has the nation’s longest-running, publicly funded voucher program. For 27 years, it has targeted African-American kids from low-income families, children who otherwise could not afford the tuition at a private or religious school. The vouchers are issued by what’s known as the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

The Atlantic
Sunshine improves test scores
When teens complain that school starts too early, they’re not wrong, according to new research. This comes as school districts across the country—including in Colorado, California, Indiana, and Tennessee—consider starting school later. The study, published last month in the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Resources, looks at districts in Florida and uses a novel approach: the fact that some areas in the state operate in the Central time zone while others use Eastern time.

Education Week
70,000 Students with disabilities secluded, restrained in school
One out of every 100 special education students was restrained by school personnel or secluded in school from his or her peers in the 2013-14 school year, presumably to quell behavior that teachers considered disruptive or dangerous. That means nearly 70,000 special education students were restrained or secluded in that school year, the most recent for which data are available.

The Hill
Charter school industry scores huge victory in Los Angeles
Driven by record spending in a board of education election, two strongly pro-charter school board candidates swept to victory in the Los Angeles school board election of May 16, 2017. Charter school advocate and political newcomer Nicholas Melvoin beat incumbent school board president Steve Zimmer, by a six-point margin. Charter schoolteacher Kelly Fitzpatrick-Nonez beat Imelda Padilla, in a much closer race.