November 2, 2015

Delaware News

The News Journal
Officers’ role in Delaware schools under scrutiny
“There are some schools that have real violence problems and benefit greatly from having police officers,” said Aaron Kupchik, a University of Delaware professor who studies school safety and school crime. “But the fact is that in most schools, keeping schools safe is not about placing police, it’s about giving students better social support. It’s helping them address their problems.”

Protection and safety in our schools
Editorial
Parents, teachers and school administrators’ main priorities are to protect, guide and instruct. While the topic of education has been a hotbed of conversation, debate and dialogue in this state, and will continue to be, the conversation about school safety should also be discussed. What happened in South Carolina may be a rare occasion. But we should make sure it never happens in Delaware. Better to be safe than sorry.

Demand better schools, not fewer tests
Opinion by Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News
Until last weekend, the Obama administration had rightly emphasized the importance of using student-performance data to ensure accountability and drive school improvement. It has also supported governors and school superintendents who are raising the bar for student achievement, especially by creating and adopting Common Core standards that are tied to college and career readiness. Yet now that results from tests aligned to these standards are showing just how many students are not on track for college, the public backlash against the tests seems to have given Obama and Duncan a case of cold feet. That’s deeply regrettable.

Time to invest in ourselves
Opinion by Sean Matthews, a teacher and Representative of the 10th District in the Delaware House of Representatives, which includes the communities of Claymont and Talleyville
I often find myself involved in policy discussions about Delaware’s schools: Race to the Top, Smarter Balanced, Opt-Out, Wilmington redistricting, etc. The best part about these discussions is that all involved parties want what is best for kids. The bad news is that almost all these discussions are missing the point. There is only one way to help our struggling families: Jobs.

U.S. Department of Education
Fact sheet: Testing action plan
The nation’s chief state school officers and local superintendents have provided strong leadership in reducing over-testing and their work deserves close attention. In Delaware, the Governor launched a review of all tests administered by the state, districts, and individual schools with the goal of decreasing the testing burden on students and teachers and increasing the time available for teaching. Delaware is providing financial resources through the Assessment Inventory Project Grants so that every district and school can conduct an in-depth inventory and review of all assessments and develop local-level recommendations and action plans. These plans will incorporate a communication component; and stakeholder groups will be involved to ensure input and transparency.

Delaware Public Media
GOP cries foul over Dept. of Ed. funding in weekly message
The state GOP is taking the Department of Education to task for continuing to fund high-paying Race to the Top positions. Federal funding that expired in 2014 had paid for 10 of those positions, which state Sen. Dave Lawson calls “temporary” in the GOP’s weekly message. After that, he says lawmakers wanted the Department to stop funding the jobs. Instead, he says eight of the 10 positions were sustained.

Education Dive
Report highlights outliers in enrolling low-income students
The Institute for Higher Education Policy looked at selective public colleges in its latest report, highlighting the schools that did the best and worst at enrolling Pell Grant recipients. While all of the colleges in the report have similar levels of selectivity, Inside Higher Ed reports Indiana University at Bloomington, Penn State, Purdue, James Madison, San Diego State, Texas Tech, Towson, the Universities of Alabama and Delaware, Virginia State, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute were among those enrolling a smaller-than-expected proportion of Pell students.

Cape Gazette
Shields’ Jenny Nauman and other principals meet with governor
Shields Elementary School Principal and current Delaware Association of School Administrators President Jenny Nauman recently joined other principals from around the state for a meeting with Gov. Jack Markell. The group was recognized for the great work members are doing in their districts and throughout the state making a difference for the students of Delaware.

National News

The Washington Post
Charters grapple with admission policies, question how public they should be
Some argue that limiting student mobility is crucial to building the kind of routines and school culture that enable success and offer students the chance at a challenging, college-preparatory education. Others say it’s not fair for publicly funded schools to have a key advantage in bolstering academic performance that neighborhood schools don’t have: the ability to limit the number of underprepared transfer students they serve while focusing on more stable students who are better able to meet the schools’ higher expectations.

Education Week
The push to roll back testing picks up steam: An Education Week odyssey
Blog by Andrew Ujifusa
Just how has the conversation about overtesting changed in recent months, weeks, and days? A new Storify from Education Week includes tweets, videos, graphics and more to show you just how the contours of the debate about tests’ proper place in schools have changed.

Vicki Phillips, outgoing K-12 Director at Gates, reflects on her tenure, priorities
“One of the things I am most proud of in this job is the way we have worked to put teachers in the center of everything,” she said. “I am just really proud of teachers. When you give them the opportunity to work together, [their ideas] catch fire. And we as a country just need to be doing a lot more of putting teachers front and center. They are unafraid of testing and accountability if it’s done well. They’re just asking it to be done with thoughtfulness, quality, and some time to prepare.” That said, Phillips said the foundation does have a bit of a mea culpa when it comes to teacher evaluation.

The Wall Street Journal
Obama’s education report card
Editorial
Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday soft-pedaled the “not great news” that scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (i.e., the “nation’s report card”) declined this year for the first time since 1990. We once hoped that education would be a bright spot of the Obama Presidency, but it appears that student learning has stalled.

LA School Report
LAUSD creating shared digital site for students, teachers, parents
A resolution approved by the LA Unified school board on Oct. 13 didn’t receive a lot of attention, but the vote to approve a pilot program with the online company Schoology has the potential to completely change how students, teachers, parents and administrators interact. The resolution launches a two-year pilot program that will test an online grade book and learning management system (LMS), with the goal of going district wide should the program prove successful.