Education – Delaware Liberal

It’s Settled?

By Brian December 1, 20164 Comments

Nutshell: 4-3. Settlement accepted. What remains to be seen is how the best interests of our students are being served by taking the settlement. Once the language is made public, we’ll get a good idea of what each board member believes is in the best interest of our kids.

Christina School District Board Elections

By Brian May 9, 20164 Comments

I was asked in a comment on another post to weigh in on the Christina School District’s School Board elections tomorrow. I said my response deserved its own post; so here we go. I’ve been following the candidates over the last several weeks reading what they’ve been putting out on social media, listening to the feedback from people who attended the candidate forums. Tonight I attended the final candidate forum in person to hear the candidates first hand and I walked out feeling the same way I felt walking in.

Polls are Open

By Brian March 23, 201620 Comments

In Christina, Brandywine, and Cape Henlopen School Districts the polls are now open for Super Referendum Wednesday. They will remain open until 8pm this evening.

What Brought the No Votes to Christina? Part I

By Brian March 14, 201613 Comments

A commenter on my previous post about supporting public education and “Super Referendum Wednesday” asked specifically about the Christina School District’s two failures last year and if there were any themes from no voters as to why they voted the way they did. Rather than answer it inline, I felt those themes deserved their own posts for visibility sake, That way the types of misinformation we have campaigned against for the last several years is put on display. Yes, there are common themes among the no-voters that emerged from both elections, and they persist even today. Check out the CSDpavingtheway or Official District’s Facebook pages for proof. Better yet, read the comments on any article the News Journal posts about Christina on delawareonline.com, just be sure to have your eye bleach ready.

Do You Support Public Education in Delaware?

By Brian March 11, 201614 Comments

Christina has absolutely awesome programs. From the REACH program, to Gauger’s Business Professionals of America Team, to our outstanding arts programs, fantastic drama and performing arts programs, band and music programs, to Lego Robotics and Engineering clubs (YES! That’s a thing and makes me want to be in elementary school again!), career pathway programs like the new Forensic Science STEM program at Glasgow High School, Language Immersion programs to our amazing student athletes and budding philanthropists and advocates for those in need! These school programs are directly supported by operating funds raised through property taxes. And all of them depend on Christina’s operating referendum passing.

Pay Per Pupil?

By Brian January 3, 201629 Comments

Imagine if we paid for other government services on a per use basis. Fire companies. They can’t douse your burning home until you pay them. Paramedics can’t begin to administer emergency medical care until your form of payment clears. Police can’t come take your car accident report until they verify your credit card transaction goes through. They can’t investigate your home invasion until you remit payment. The 911 phone system. “The fee for this service is $2.99 per minute for the first minute, and $1.99 per minute thereafter, please enter your 16-digit credit or debit card number followed by the pound sign”. Transportation. I take Route 40 to work sometimes. Sometimes I take 896. Imagine if they set up EZ Pass sensors at every point where a secondary road connected.

Remedies for the Classroom

By Brian November 18, 20153 Comments

Often times when discussing education in Delaware, the conversation quickly turns to funding and resources which evokes a bristly response from residents and tax payers. We spend a LOT of money on our schools yet stories like the one Diane Ravitch shares here are every day occurrences up and down Delaware and all across the country.

LIVE from the Red Clay Consolidated School District Special Board Meeting on WEIC

By Brian November 2, 20157 Comments

Red Clay's Board of Education has called a special session public meeting this evening. The lone topic on the agenda is WEIC. This will be my attempt at live blogging the meeting, start to finish. You can check out the agenda and related documents from Red Clay's BoardDocs site: http://www.boarddocs.com/de/rccsd/Board.nsf/Public Meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30pm.

Join the Wilmington Parent Advocacy Council for Education

By cassandra_m September 23, 2015

If you live in Wilmington and are a parent, grandparent, foster parent, guardian, primary caregiver, student or just plain concerned community member -- this is a newly formed group that is going to advocate for better equity, access and educational opportunity for Wilmington kids. From the brochure:

The PACE Network joins adults, youth and educators together to imagine, create and advocate for equity, access and more effective learning in schools and community places. The Vision is to ensure all Wilmington youth safely attend quality early learning programs, read on level by 3rd grade, excel in reading, math, science, social studies, technology, arts, sports, extracurricular activities and graduate high school prepared for college/career success. The PACE Network aims to shape a unified voice to advocate for Wilmington students. Families and city residents play a critical role in our children’s education. Network membership is open to parents, grandparents, community members, guardians, foster parents, educators in early care, pre-schools, districts and charter schools enrolling Wilmington students.

Guest Post: Opt-Out Ends The Madness Of High-Stakes Testing

By pandora September 17, 20154 Comments

Kevin from Exceptional Delaware asked if we could share his post. The State Board of Education is having their monthly meeting at 1:00pm today. The Parent Strike press conference will begin prior to the meeting at 12:30pm in front of Legislative Hall in Dover. If any of our readers attend, let us know in the comments.

As a proud advocate of parent opt out, I watched in horror as Governor Markell vetoed legislation created for parents and their fundamental rights. The News Journal refers to House Bill 50 as giving parents the right to opt out. This is wrong. It’s about honoring a parental right that already exists, an attempt to codify that right and stop schools and the Delaware Department of Education from punishing schools over parent opt-out. Today, the State Board of Education will have their monthly meeting, and they will discuss Regulation 103. To give some quick back-story here, Regulation 103 covers school accountability. Born out of Race To The Top, Delaware won in the first round partly because we already had this regulation in place. Race To The Top was an abject failure. But the DOE and the State Board are attempting to further legitimize this program under the guise of the Delaware School Success Framework. This “school report card” is nothing more than Federal mandate PLUS the many layers of complexity the DOE added to it. This regulation will put any Title I school in jeopardy if the students don’t perform well on Smarter Balanced. This week, we will hear about the creation of 10 new so-called “Focus Schools” and 4 “Focus Plus Schools”. The DOE will attempt to sell this as yet another way of “fixing” these high-need schools. The truth is, these labels are punitive in nature and are just another step before they become “Priority Schools”. We all know how that went a year ago.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Poverty And The Smarter Balanced Assessment

By pandora September 10, 201563 Comments

Last week LiberalGeek took a comment I posted about the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) scores and turned it into a graph. Now we have many graphs and charts. Inside you will find charts of the four districts that serve city of Wilmington students (click on charts inside to enlarge). You will also find a chart of Charter Schools. Pay attention to the trend lines. Some are more obvious than others. Before I continue, let me say this: I do not support the SBA, but since we'll be using these scores to judge and label students, teachers and schools we need to look at the data. This test will have consequences.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Results Are In

By pandora September 3, 201522 Comments

I'm not even sure where to begin. I'll start here:

Only half of Delaware students are proficient in English and fewer than four in 10 are proficient in math, according to results of the state's tough new standardized test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment. (link takes you to the results)

. It's no secret I'm not a fan of standardized tests, mainly because I think we're using them incorrectly. We focus on handing out gold stars to schools who pass and slap "failing" labels on schools that don't. But... maybe this is changing?

"There will certainly be an increase in regards to how the state allocates resources--and that's really part of the value here--let's understand which districts and which schools have the greatest struggles, and let's make sure that we, as a state, are able to allocate resources to those students who need it most."

Hey, that sounds like equitable funding. Could it be? I'm skeptical tho, since I lived through the Priority School fiasco. "Allocate resources" is usually followed with the threat of charter conversion, privatization and closure. We'll see. That said, if these tests were actually used to help struggling schools (instead of punishing them) I'd change my tune.

Where Are The Smarter Balanced Test Results?

By pandora August 3, 20156 Comments

According to Kavips (posted on August 1st):

It has been 7 days now that the Delaware Department has sat on the results of the Smarter Balanced Assessments. Day one was the release by other states of their preliminary data alerting all that the state now had the results… One must ask why in the “most open and transparent administration in Delaware’s history” (Markell’s state of the state claim) we are still waiting for the preliminary data to be released.

Do we really have the results? The test was given last spring (March and April) so you'd think for a test to have educational impact the results would be available quickly.