May 22, 2017

Delaware News

Office of the Governor
Governor Carney visits Appoquinimink High School to highlight Pathways program
Governor John Carney visited Appoquinimink High School on Friday with Delaware Secretary of Education Susan Bunting to talk with educators and students about Delaware’s Pathways to Prosperity Program. Governor Carney and Secretary Bunting toured classrooms and met with students engaged in different pathways. Governor Carney is committed to expanding work-based learning opportunities for Delaware students.

WDEL
Counselors: ’13 Reasons Why’ should open door to much-needed conversation about suicide prevention in Delaware schools
A controversial Netflix featuring some disturbing subject matter has counselors statewide on alert. 13 Reasons Why, which is based on a novel, is about 17-year-old Hannah Baker committing suicide and leaving behind a series of audio tapes addressed to fellow students, who she felt were responsible for her death in some way. The show’s release was likely coordinated with the timing of many students’ spring break in the hopes of an uptick in binge watching from the targeted demographic, which prompted William Penn High School principal Dr. Brian Erksine to e-mail useful resources to teachers and staff in the event students started asking questions.

Delaware Public Media
Delaware House passes charter school rules change
Charter schools may soon no longer be able to use a five-mile radius surrounding the location as a screening tool for their student body. Instead, a charter would be able to use the school district in which it resides as an enrollment preference. But the bill explicitly excludes the part of the Christina School District within the city of Wilmington, which critics say lets Newark Charter continue to duck enrolling poor, minority students.

Rodel Blog
Digging Deeper: Student need grows as budgets shrink
Delaware’s budget crisis has taken quite a toll on education and the state as a whole. At the same time, student needs are growing, with some of our highest-need populations (low-income students, English learners, and students with disabilities) increasing at a faster rate than ever. With changing demographics and the expanding role of the public school system, students are going to need all the resources they can get.

Cape Gazette
Cape High senior takes a stand
Arianna Carpenito has something to say. The Cape High senior said she’s tired of racism, homophobia, sexism, and bullying at school. So she made six T-shirts, for herself and some friends, to make a statement. When she was told she couldn’t wear the T-shirt to school, she said, she decided to take her case to the Cape Henlopen school board.

Newark Post
Graduation ceremony a final first for Newark Charter’s inaugural senior class
In the spring of 2013, eighth-graders at Newark Charter School were bused a mile down the road to an empty warehouse on McIntire Drive, given a tour and asked to envision it as their new high school. School Director Greg Meece handed the students Sharpie pens and had them sign their names on the unfinished gym floor so they – literally and figuratively – would forever be part of the foundation of Newark Charter High School.

National News

The Journal
Report: Students with learning and attention issues three times more likely to drop out
One in five children have learning and attention issues, or brain-based challenges in reading, writing, math, organization, focus, listening comprehension, social skills, motor skills or a combination of these, according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). In a new report, the NCLD examines why students facing these issues are three times more likely to drop out of school.

Inside Higher Ed
Bipartisan push on career education
Bipartisan support for career and technical education is building, with Virginia Foxx and the Center for American Progress finding rare agreement Tuesday by calling for more of a policy focus on job training that doesn’t require a four-year degree. U.S. Representative Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who leads the House education committee, was speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on the eve of her committee’s planned markup of a bill that would reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, the primary federal law that oversees career education programs.

The Seattle Times
School stats: The number of emergency teachers in Washington classrooms has doubled
When they have no other option, school districts can hire people without teaching certificates — or even a college degree — to fill temporary teacher vacancies. Two years ago, districts reported 527 such individuals teaching in their classrooms. This school year, the number has more than doubled to 1,229. Of the state’s 295 school districts, 168 employed at least one “emergency” teacher this school year, according to data collected by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

Education Week
State to educators: Here’s what ESSA means for you
Kay Cavanaugh, who helps run the only schoolhouse in Trenton, a speck of a town on North Dakota’s sprawling western plains, used to appreciate the accountability movement ushered in by the No Child Behind Act. Just half of the one-school district’s 200 students meet the state’s academic reading and math benchmarks and, she said, “I’m convinced we could do better.” But, over the years, the federal law got old.

NPR
Why it’s so hard to know whether school choice is working
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been a passionate proponent of expanding school choice, including private school vouchers and charter schools, and she has the clear backing of President Trump. But does the research justify her enthusiasm? Experts say one single, overarching issue bedevils their efforts to study the impact of school choice programs. That is: It’s hard to disentangle the performance of a school from the selection of its students.