Markell: On Education
This is part 1 of the series. More will be forthcoming and I finish processing them. Since I’m turning in for the night, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to see part 2.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz2A_7IBrfY[/youtube]
Tags: Jack Markell
OK-I’ll start–get some rest Geek–you deserve it; I’m a night owl. Thanks for doing this..Jack did fine..I would like to have seen him say along w/ his acknowledged “resegregation”, a commitment that charters can only be “programming focused”, e.g. languages, math and science, fine arts, etc.–instead of the lightweight reasons that have passed prior. Thrilled to see him defer to the LEAD commission over Hallucination 2015! I know your illustrious interview team were under the gun to cover a bunch of topics, and you are off to a great start. Would have loved to see him introduce a “master teacher” concept as part of a compensation strategy/initiative–a win-win for employee and stakeholder. Good working knowledge of issues mentioned–thanks for getting the word out there. How much total time did your team interview him? Looking forward to more.
Teacher’s compensation based on achievement performance! Good idea however, the compensation for school and district administrator should also be impacted by the school and district student achievement performance.
Conduit Loans! These are private commercial loans that are non state funds and no risk to the state. DMA was shot down via pure politics that was driven by DSEA. However, there has to be some guidelines to prevent financially unstable charter schools from obtaining such loans because if the school fail do to poor fiscal practices the end result would be it would close. Copeland / Lee think this is great, failing schools should close. However, the closure impacts and disrupts children’s education. The would be force back into traditional public schools and more likely fall behind their classmate.
Charter Schools! 17 charter schools in Delaware and 8 are under academic review. Those 8 charter schools are high poverty and high minority. Markell mention re-segregation via charter schools. Lee and Copeland hold up Charter School of Wilmington as proof one charter schools are the way to reform public education but in reality the actual called for educational reform was to close the achievement gap between black and white students. Read Title 14, Chapter 5 of the Delaware Code, you’ll see some creative legislation crafted by the elitist that carved out rules giving Charter School of Wilmington it’s special admission practices that are protected by law. Think real hard as to how and why Charter School of Wilmington was the very first charter school in Delaware. Then if you’re good enough you may be able to connect the political dots back to the “Don”
I openly criticize legislators who sat on charter school boards because it sends a message that they have given up on traditional public schools and the willingness to reform the public schools system rather then walk away to built another Titanic. The charter school law was a first class political work of art created by the “Don”
Vision 2015 has it merits but look closely at the Rodel Foundation Vision 2015 partners. Skip from WSFS wasn’t randomly pick to comment for the News Journal’s article. Bill Lee didn’t say he would follow it down the line without political reason. Could it be Pete Dupont’s participation in the Vision 2015 committee?? Tom Carper is on it to as was Jack a few years back. Many of those behind Vision 2015 were part of the business round table who gave us DSTP. They took DSTP an achievement test only to measure student achievement to better address student deficiencies and twist it into a means to hold students and teachers accountable. However, these clueless business prick couldn’t comprehend their new standards were not aligned with the curriculum at the time of rollout 1998. The director of assessment for DOE at the time, young man name John a BYU boy bailed out and when to work for Hartcourt Assessment the company he picked to help develop and supply Delaware with the DSTP test.
The candidates all of them want to scrap the DSTP! Well, duh it has be already scrapped and because of budget cuts seeking and implementing the replacement test was delayed. Also, any new state assessment test must be approved by USDOE re: NCLB
The LEAD report make great recommendation but some educators and administrators have some reservations about portion of this plan that will end up as political battle.
Nothing will change until there is full financial transparency of schools, school districts and DOE itself. Also as many of you may agree, we need the legislators to reinstate Title 14, Chapter 2, Subchapter I, Section 207. This section of the law was repealed because someone aka me exposed the fact the law wasn’t being followed. It was the only law that added some sense of holding legislators accountable when crafting and voting on education legislation!
JC–we interviewed him for an hour.
Well thanks deldem–he went pretty deep so far for that round. Very generous of him to give you this time, AND meet you anywhere. Thank you for going anywhere AND keeping cassandra safe. And Geek–I don’t know where you find the time to do all this behind the scenes “stuff” to keep my job easy of commenting, complaining, and calendaring. You’re all unsung civic heroes! Which reminds me–ignorant as I am on all this blog fundamental stuff–is there some sort of subscription you guys pay or something to maintain this site? Surely, I’ve outlasted a round of drinks 3 months ago. Please let me (really all of us) know, what is needed to keep this going-and maybe we can do a DL fundraiser, for just that DL! I love the local insight!!
Kilroy and Joanne,
Would either, both, of you have time to talk to me about these issues? I’d like to get your insights on the future of Delaware education.
Warning, my going in position is that public schools trump everything else. We’ve simply got to get that part right.
Drop me an email and I’ll get back to you asap. young.rh@comcast.net
Thanks for all you do!
Rebecca
Rebecca // Oct 4, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Kilroy and Joanne, Would either, both, of you have time to talk to me about these issues?
I’ll send to an E-mail
http://kilroysdelaware.blogspot.com/
http://home.comcast.net/~rcceac/site/?/home/
Red Clay Community Education Action Committee my new project that will hopefully bring parents a united political voice.
I was on DSTP before it was even rolled out in 1998.