October 21, 2016

Delaware News

Delaware 105.9
State Auditor will release audit info for IRSD ahead of Nov. 22 referendum
Voters in the Indian River School District can expect to have information about a state audit available as they head to the polls for a referendum next month. The audit has been in progress for months, following the resignation of former district chief financial officer Patrick Miller – after he was put on leave by the district.

Delaware Public Media
School desegregation’s impact – four decades later
Thirty-eight years after the start of city-suburb busing to desegregate schools in Wilmington and its suburbs, the racial composition of most schools the city has reverted to the majority black ratios that prevailed in the early 1970s. While discussing their work during the desegregation era, Jea P. Street and Jeffrey A. Raffel, also offered some insights into the current debate over high-poverty schools in Wilmington and its suburbs.

Desegregation stalwarts, honored by ACLU, recall 1970s’ struggles
Delaware Public Media contributor Larry Nagengast reported on the Wilmington school desegregation case from 1973 through 1976 and the start of school desegregation in New Castle County in 1978. He recently sat down with Jeffrey A. Raffel and Jea P. Street to discuss their experiences in the 1970s and the current state of public education in New Castle County.

Department of Education
Second round of community conversations will collect ESSA plan feedback
The Delaware Department of Education will host a second round of community conversations in November and December to collect public input on the first draft of the state’s plan under the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In December 2015, Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the main federal law governing public education.

The News Journal
Delaware shouldn’t waste opportunity to overhaul school accountability system
Opinion by Michael J. Petrilli, president, and Brandon L. Wright, editorial director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Delaware needs to improve its accountability system for K–12 education. A relic of the No Child Left Behind era, it has a critical flaw: It encourages schools to narrowly focus on the progress of their lowest-performing students. That’s a worthy and important objective, but it shouldn’t be the only outcome schools are held responsible for. This shortcoming is particularly pernicious for high-achieving poor and minority children, students who deserve better and are critical to Delaware’s—and our nation’s—competitiveness.

National News

Deseret News
Report: Salaries just ‘part of the solution’ for Utah’s teacher shortage
If Utahns want to ease the burden on teachers, they will have to take a hard look at how much they really value them, according to Andrea Rorrer, director of the Utah Education Policy Center. In an election brief authored in partnership with the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and Hinckley Institute of Politics, researchers called on lawmakers to address low teacher pay but also to invest in professional development and teacher recognition.

Education Week
‘Red flags’ to look for when evaluating personalized learning products
Personalized learning: Is it an educational imperative, a marketing strategy for an ed-tech product, or both? Too often, teachers and administrators say, they find that personalized learning is used by companies as mere buzzwords to promote a run-of-the-mill digital tool. “In the marketing literature, this term is overused,” said Devin Vodicka, the superintendent of the Vista, Calif., school district.

NPR
Texas may be denying tens of thousands of children special education
When Rosley Espinoza’s daughter was very young, in preschool, she started acting differently. She seemed distracted and would get in trouble at school. “Lack of interest, teachers’ notes coming home with behavior notes,” Espinoza says, speaking in Spanish. She says she asked school officials to evaluate her daughter, Citlali, for special education, but they didn’t.

The New York Times
Are Detroit’s most terrible schools unconstitutional?
Opinion by Geoffrey R. Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago
At one Detroit school, just 4 percent of third graders scored proficient on Michigan’s English assessment test. At another, 9.5 percent did. Those students are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last month that asserts that children have a federal constitutional right to the opportunity to learn to read and write.