October 30, 2015

Delaware News

Delaware Today
Wilmington: Changing schools, changing city
Improvements in Wilmington’s education landscape portend big things for students—and for the life of the city.

UDaily
ETS researcher Paul Deane to speak in School of Education colloquium series
The University of Delaware School of Education’s fall colloquium series, “Writing Research: Where We Are and Where We Are Heading,” continues at 1 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 4, with a presentation by Paul Deane, principal research scientist in research and development at the Educational Testing Service (ETS).

The News Journal
Women’s bills make progress through General Assembly
House Bill 81: This law adds to the existing Education Profile reports compiled by the state Department of Education the name and contact information for a federal Title IX coordinator for every public school, including public institutions of higher learning.

Be cybernetic: An associate professor teaches students in Uganda via Skype
There are 13 students at Stawa University in Kampala, Uganda, who are benefitting from Dr. Sharon Yoder’s extensive teaching experience. Yoder, an associate professor for WilmU’s College of Arts and Sciences, teaches the Ugandan students via Skype. Once a week, she logs on at 8:30 a.m. (4:30 p.m. Uganda time), and conducts two-hour classes. It’s not always easy, and students do have some challenges.

Delaware Department of Education
Scholarship information, other help available during College Application Month
As Delaware continues celebrating this year’s College Application Month, the Department of Education urges the state’s college-bound students to begin searching local and national scholarships on the new online Scholarship Compendium.

National News

U.S. News & World Report
Gifted yet disadvantaged kids may be getting short shrift
Under federal law, states and school districts must track the educational progress, or lack thereof, of poor students, minorities and those still learning English. And they’re continually working to ensure those students don’t fall behind, or if they do, that there’s a plan in place to catch them up. But what about the country’s highest-achieving students? Who’s responsible for them? And what about disadvantaged gifted students who often lack support systems and depend entirely on public schools? As it turns out, not very many people. In total, 35 states require schools to identify their top-performers, though that doesn’t mean they’re obliged to act if they begin falling behind. Fifteen states don’t track them at all.

Education Week
CAP report: Congress shouldn’t forget ‘subgroup’ students in ESEA renewal
Blog by Alyson Klein
Neither the Republican-crafted House nor a bipartisan Senate’s bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act does enough to look out for traditionally low-performing groups of students, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank closely aligned with the Obama administration.

Open ed. resources would get boost under Education Department proposal
Blog by Benjamin Herold
To promote wider use of open educational resources by states and schools, the U.S. Department of Education proposed Thursday a new regulation that would require any new intellectual property developed with grant funds from the department to be openly licensed. That would make such materials available for free use, revision, and sharing by anyone. It would also represent a big, federally supported step away from the textbook publishing industry, long a backbone of K-12 education in the U.S.

The Hechinger Report
Graduates of four-year universities flock to community colleges for job skills
One out of every 14 of the people who attend community colleges has already earned a bachelor’s degrees. At some community colleges, the proportion is as high as one in five.

AZ Central
Arizona Legislature starts work on K-12 funding plan
The special session comes as Ducey’s top staffers have been spearheading discussions between lawmakers and education groups to resolve a 5-year-old legal battle over the state’s underfunding of public district and charter schools. The plan infuses $3.5 billion into schools.

The Brookings Institution
Why did NAEP scores drop?
What accounts for the decline? It is never just one thing. Further, NAEP is to schooling as a thermometer is to a medical patient. It tells something important about the health of its subject, but virtually nothing about why things are as they are. That hasn’t stopped the usual pouring forth of opinions and punditry about what this year’s NAEP results mean.