May 25, 2017

Delaware News

Delaware State News
Bill would let school districts raise taxes with no referendum
Draft legislation in the General Assembly would let school districts raise property taxes without referendums. The bill, which has not yet been assigned a number, would enable school boards to increase taxes every two years by the percentage change in the federal Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers or by 3 percent. Such tax hikes could only be used to pay for operational costs and not construction.

Rodel Blog
Tribute to a global teacher
Blog post by Paul Herdman, president and ceo of the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
Last Friday, a friend and colleague, Lee Sing Kong, passed away from an apparent heart attack at the age of 65. See a story about his passing here. He was both a horticulturist and an educator. I knew him as the latter in his role as the director of the National Institute for Education (NIE). He was a master educator. He not only helped build Singapore’s system into one of the best in the world, but he was incredibly generous in sharing everything he was learning to help other educators and policymakers from around the globe improve their practice.

Digging Deeper: Student need grows as budgets shrink
Blog post by Shyanne Miller, policy associate at the Rodel Foundation of Delaware
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.

The News Journal
Red Clay broke election rules on tax vote; funding system broken
A Chancery Court judge has ruled that the Red Clay Consolidated School District broke election rules when it successfully passed a voter referendum to raise property taxes last year, but he refused to invalidate the result, citing “dysfunction” in the state’s school funding system. “In this case, without a favorable vote, Red Clay faced a looming deficit. Prevailing in the Special Election was therefore crucial, and the Red Clay administrators were under a great deal of pressure to achieve that result,” wrote Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster in an opinion issued Wednesday.

WDEL
Proposed education cuts concern Delaware residents at Governor Carney’s budget reset meeting
Education cuts are the main concern for many residents at Governor John Carney’s budget reset meeting.. With last night’s meeting within the Christina School District, where 77 positions have been impacted because of the budget, which is cutting $37 million from public education, residents are concerned about their children’s future.

National News

Education Week
Trump budget would slash education dept. spending, boost school choice
President Donald Trump’s full budget proposal for the U.S. Department of Education, released on Tuesday, includes big shifts in funding priorities and makes cuts to spending for teacher development, after-school enrichment, and career and technical education, while ramping up investments in school choice.  A $1 billion cash infusion for Title I’s services for needy children would be earmarked as grants designed to promote public school choice, instead of going out by traditional formulas to school districts.

DeVos, democrats wage war over budget cuts, students’ rights under vouchers
Democrats sparred with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about the budget proposal from President Donald Trump that would direct $1.4 billion to expand school choice and sharply questioning her commitment to protecting students with federal vouchers from discrimination during a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Meanwhile, Republicans questioned the education secretary more gently, focusing on special education and applauding the fiscal 2018 budget plan’s emphasis on new resources for school choice.

MinnPost
Minnesota standardized test scores have a new value. Here’s why it could pay to opt-in.
It’s too early to tell whether the opt-out rates for the number of students choosing not to take the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) in math, reading, and science are continuing to climb. That’s because this year’s test scores and participation rates won’t be released by the state Department of Education until later this summer. This lag time is often cited as one of the major critiques of the state standardized tests.

The Columbia County News Times
Students sign letters of intent for pursuing teaching careers
Two Columbia County High Schools recently took part in the first Georgia Future Educators Signing Day, an initiative through the Department of Education to encourage and bolster the pipeline of students into the education field. Over 20 students from Greenbrier and Evans high schools signed letters of intent to become teachers, having successfully completed their CTAE educational pathway course requirements.

The Hechinger Report
In this New Hampshire high school, internships shape the future of learning
Harrison Hicks, 16, sat at a small corner desk in the offices of Filtrine Manufacturing Company, a maker of water filtration equipment, drawing circles as his mentor, Josh Flagg, watched. In school, Harrison had just finished studying the circle in geometry. Now he listened intently as Flagg taught him how to use a circle to calculate the angle of a filtration part, which was then going to be manufactured on site.