May 25, 2016

Delaware

Delaware Public Media
Further expansion coming to state’s language immersion program
Delaware is ready to take the next step with its language immersion program – looking to the future as it celebrates its initial success. Gov. Jack Markell and state education officials joined language immersion students in the Caesar Rodney School District Tuesday at Simpson Elementary in Wyoming to mark four years of the program.

Delaware State News
Officials: World Language Immersion program a success
The World Language Immersion program began in 2012 as a job-focused program. Since then, it has grown in ways the original proponent of the idea did not even picture. Just take Abigail LaMotte and her family. Two years ago, they traveled to China to adopt a child. While many Americans visiting China would have faced a language barrier, the LaMottes already spoke a good deal of Mandarin — or rather, their daughter did.

Rodel Blog
Fixing Our Funding: Q&A with Mike Griffith
Blog post by Matt Amis, senior communications officer at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
If anyone can navigate the complex and hazardous waters of education funding, it’s Mike Griffith. As the senior school finance analyst for Education Commission of the States, he’s worked in the field of school finance policy for more than 19 years, and has focused his research on the condition of state budgets, the adequacy and equity of state finance formulas, and promising practices in funding programs for high-need students.

Sussex County Post
Senior musicians at Indian River High School land scholarships
On May 19, the Indian River High School Music Department held its annual music awards ceremony in the high school auditorium. At the ceremony, two graduating seniors were awarded scholarships totaling $3,000 dollars. Haylee Olley, daughter of Marc and Christine Olley of Selbyville, was awarded the 4th Annual Jackie Pavik Memorial Scholarship award of $1,000. Haylee will be attending Wesley College in Dover in the fall.

The News Journal
Delaware lawmakers have $35 million less to work with
State leaders found out Monday they have $35.3 million less to spend than they thought they had last month, which means competition for funding will be that much fiercer. All this means there isn’t enough new money in the budget to pay for all the proposals for new spending that are circulating. Take education, for example. Lawmakers are under intense pressure from Wilmington leaders and advocates to approve a plan that would overhaul the city’s school system and provide more funding to high-poverty schools.

WDEL
Outdoor classroom helps Postlethwait Middle students go back to basics
Forget four walls: one middle school science teacher in downstate Delaware is using the great outdoors for his classroom. “I looked out the window and said, ‘Could I have that?’ I was pointing at a drainage ditch,” explained Todd Klawinski, a seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Postlethwait Middle School in Camden. His boss looked at him like he was crazy, but that was the moment five years ago, Klawinski recounted, when his out-the-box idea for an outdoor classroom was born.

National

Chalkbeat
As new federal education law looms, McQueen seeks input for Tennessee plan
The State Department of Education is inviting Tennesseans to share their ideas about how Tennessee should use leeway granted to states under the new federal education law. Education Commissioner Candice McQueen kicked off a statewide listening tour Tuesday to meet with educators, parents and students as her department prepares to craft a Tennessee-specific plan for K-12 schools in compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.

Education Week
Interdistrict Enrollment Is Appealing But Tricky
Florida schools are preparing for next year’s rollout of one of the nation’s most unrestricted open-enrollment laws allowing students to more easily cross district lines to go to school—a practice that has grown slowly nationwide amid both statutory and practical hurdles. Nationwide, 23 states had some type of mandatory, interdistrict open-enrollment laws in 2015, prior to enactment of Florida’s law, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The New York Times
Texan Who Posted Extreme Views Loses Runoff for State Education Post
The East Texas woman who claimed President Obama was a drug-addicted gay prostitute in his youth was defeated in a Republican primary runoff election Tuesday, losing her bid to become one of the top education officials in Texas. The woman, Mary Lou Bruner, 69, a former kindergarten teacher, had used her Facebook page to post her extreme views on politics and education.

The Washington Post
Common Core testing group wages aggressive campaign against critics on social media
The Common Core testing group called PARCC Inc. has been waging an aggressive campaign to take down several dozen social media references to the PARCC test being administered to students this spring — items that include questions from the exam and some that don’t. Dozens of education bloggers have been writing about the PARCC exam since May 7, when an anonymous teacher posted a piece on the blog of Celia Oyler, an education professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, that harshly critiqued the fourth grade PARCC exam and offered three questions from the test many students are taking this spring.

UNICEF
New fund launches to address global education crisis
Press Release
Global and national organisations today launch a new fund to better coordinate support for, and drive investment in, education for children and youth affected by humanitarian emergencies and protracted crises.  Today one in four of the world’s school-aged children – nearly half a billion – live in countries affected by crises. Around 75 million of these children and youth are either already missing out on their education, receiving poor quality schooling or at risk of dropping out of school altogether.