Around the Horn for July 19-25, 2013

It’s back! Our weekly trip around the Delaware Blogosphere was one of our best features here at Delaware Liberal some years ago. And then the Delaware Blogosphere shrank, what with Dave Burris leaving DP or First State Politics and Mike Matthews leaving Down With Absolutes, and Dana Garrett leaving his blog. But the work of Kilroy, Kavips and Nancy Willing, among others, needs to be highlighted and shared among us more, especially on the education issue and county government.

The below links are not necessarily from last week, but from the last month, long tagged in my RSS Reader to follow up on. Going forward, starting next week, the links provided here will be from that week. And I want all of you to post in the comments blog posts and stories that I and we have missed, and Delaware blogs that we should start reading.

Nancy Willing shows us who among our current and former state and federal legislators have ties or are members of the right wing state legislation mill, ALEC:

House of Representatives
Rep. Deborah Hudson (R-12)[1] Member
Rep. Daniel Short (R-39), former State Chairman[2][3]
Senate
Sen. Patricia Blevins (D-7); currently majority leader. [4]
Sen. Margaret R. Henry (D-2) [4], currently majority whip.
Former Representatives
Rep. E. Bradford Bennett (D-32); Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force, Civil Justice Task Force [5]
Former Rep. Joe DiPinto,[4] former ALEC State Chair[6] (now Director, Office of Economic Development, Wilmington[7])
Rep. Robert Gilligan (D-19), listed in “1999 ALEC Leaders in the States” by ALEC[6]
Former House Majority Leader Wayne Smith[6] (now President and CEO of the Delaware Healthcare Association, the trade group for Delaware’s hospital industry[8])
Former Rep. Terry R. Spence (R-New Castle County)[6]
Former House Majority Whip Charles Welch (R)[6] (now Kent County Judge of the Court of Common Pleas[9])
Former Senators
Former Sen. Majority Leader Thurman Adams (died 2009)[6]
Former Sen. Steven Amick (R-10)[6]
Former Sen. Thomas B. Sharp (D-Pinecrest), former President Pro Tempore[6]

Kavips looks at poverty’s influence on student’s test scores.

Poverty plays a big part in these scores. Remarkably the highest scoring units tend to have very low levels of those considered poor. There are some exceptions both ways, and praise or accountability needs to be extended to those parties who fall in either camp.

Allan Loudell in his Open Thread / Weekend Forum has the result of the Cape Henlopen Board of Education meeting last night.

The Cape Henlopen Board of Education deadlocked 3-3 on whether to offer an elective course about the BIBLE’s impact on history, art, and literature. Cape Henlopen’s superintendent Robert Fulton suggests it would be exceedingly difficult to select an appropriate teacher who would be acceptable to all. Such a course would appear to pass Constitutional muster, but critics fear it could easily cross the line. My large public high school in the Chicago area offered a unit in English classes on the BIBLE as literature. But that would probably be less controversial than attempting to teach The BIBLE’s influence on U.S. history.

Transparent Christina notices how the DelDOE and Governor Markell have subtly reset their education goals to mask the fact that we have missed the original goals.

John Connolly at Town Square Delaware has two posts that are worthy of your attention:

Doomed? Is it Possible for Republicans to win in Delaware?

The most effective method of answering this question involves simply comparing voter registration statistics from the late 90s (and early ’00s) with current numbers. The results are telling.

In 1996, 42% of registered voters were Democrats, while 35% were Republican. Though this statistic points to a Democratic advantage, it is not necessarily indicative of one-party dominance, as “registered” Democrats typically outnumber “registered” Republicans. Similarly, in 2000, 43% of registered voters were Democrats, and 34% were Republicans, signifying a small, almost negligible shift in the Democratic direction.

In 2012, however, the numbers tell a different story. Registered Democrats now account for a full 48% of registered voters, with just 29% of registered voters identifying themselves as Republicans. This shift should alarm Republicans for two reasons. First, the obvious: Democrats hold a massive advantage in voter registration. And second, tellingly, the gains seem to come at the expense of Republican registration. Rather than simply siphoning off independents, with the allure of voting in competitive Democratic primaries, the Democrats have—successfully—gone after registered Republicans. The statistics from New Castle County, home to the state’s Democratic base, as well as the state’s moderate Republican base (the group of Republicans most likely to switch parties), exemplify this shift in voting patterns. In 2000, registered Democrats represented just over 43% of registered voters in the county. In 2012, they accounted for over 48%.

The School Issue.

In a recent article for Town Square Delaware, I examined one of the malaises strangling the Delaware economy, namely, that young, talented workers flee the state for brighter horizons elsewhere in the country. The state of Delaware has not adequately wooed these workers. Furthermore, it would be a mistake to concentrate the wooing process on adults alone; investments—rather, smarter investments—in Delaware’s school system are necessary to promote long-term economic growth, and to create an atmosphere which attracts, rather than repels, the skilled young workers who will drive the state’s economy.

Ironically, the ostensible improvements in Delaware’s education system have received a plethora of attention from both the news media and the Markell administration. Delaware finished first out of about 40 states in the Department of Education’s Race to the Top competition, allowing Delaware to receive funding for its stated goals, which include, among others, “providing deep support to the state’s lowest achieving schools,” and “elevating the education profession.” This should be terrific news for much of the state; these aims are noble and worthwhile.

But Delaware’s Achilles’ heel with education has long been that it spends piles of money—to minimal success. In this study, Delaware was ranked 37th out of 39 states for which data was available in terms of “education efficiency”. Essentially, First State residents get less “bang for their buck” than residents of other states.

Kavips on why we need local control over our local schools.

Because we had an elected School Board of citizens:

A) Delaware Autism Program residences were saved by keeping them open, functioning as training facilities, for students whose IEPS demanded the services.

B) Enacted the first transparency policy in the state that compels the audio recording and online posting of our public monthly meetings.

C) Invested in Montessori education, piloting Delaware’s first and only public Montessori program,

D) Grew SPA (Sarah Pyles Academy) – our nationally recognized credit-recovery last-chance academy for students who’ve checked out of education, but now have checked back in.

E) Re-homed Networks, bringing this best-practice-based, amazing vocational-skill-building program together – every division under one roof – for the first time – to the betterment of the way we deliver on the IEP goals of the students served therein.

F) Created the Christina Early Education Center – centralizing all of our preschool classrooms in Newark into one school ..

G) Eliminated error-filled Zero Tolerance from the district — replaced by a jointly therapeutic and punitive code of conduct

H) Implemented a pilot of “therapeutic classrooms” in our quest to create the appropriate environment for each child,

I) Installed a locally grown and beloved educator as our superintendent rather than engage in an expensive search firm for someone to use this district as another stepping stone to higher office.

J) Survive the RTTT assault on education. “Survive” as in present tense, not past, b/c it’s not over. RTTT will live on in some ways beyond the grant expiration.. Our schools will exit RTTT and some of its many cumbersome mandates one year earlier than our sister districts because we refused to buckle to being bullied by Markell.

Boom. That’s a lot of work and a lot to be extremely proud of.