Tag: DDOE
Guest Post: Opt-Out Ends The Madness Of High-Stakes Testing
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.
Here We Go Again… Pencader Charter School
I detest hostage situations, especially when the hostages are children. Pencader Business and Finance Charter School is in financial trouble again. Shocking, I know. Seems they’ve run out of money and are threatening to close the school on April 30th.
The News Journal has the story:
In a letter addressed to parents, students and teachers last week, president Frank McIntosh said Pencader didn’t have enough money left to pay teachers’ salaries through the end of the year, putting it at risk of bankruptcy. He said the school needs $350,000 to pay its debts and enable its students graduate.
McIntosh said transferring students back to their feeders schools so late in the year would be a mess. Traditional public schools, especially those in the Christina and Colonial school districts, would have to accommodate hundreds of students on short notice with little additional resources, he said.
Someone Needs To Address The Pencader Charter School Situation
I wrote about the problems at Pencader Charter school this past July. You can read what I wrote here. Here’s a snippet: What’s a Pencader parent to do? And that’s the main point of this post. I am calling on Pencader leadership, the DOE, politicians and the Governor to give these parents answers. Will Pencader […]
Comment Rescue: Delaware Department of Education Public Meetings
Mike O., over at The Seventh Type Blog, brings these meetings to our attention: Teachers and parents: The Delaware Department of Education is holding the first of three public meetings tonight asking the question: Do you have specific ideas about regulations that should be modified or eliminated? If so, we want to hear from you. […]
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