Tag: Delaware Education
Accurate Education Funding Data is Hard to Come By, Unless You Know Where to Look
Non-special school Christina School District Expense Per Pupil from State & Local Funding Sources: $10,899.97. Christina School District Expense Per Pupil from Local Funding Sources (your property taxes, Christina residents): $5,001.31
And those are the actual numbers. Not some artificially inflated, skewed, misleading fuzzy math number those other guys are spewing.
A Literal “Yes” or “No” Question
If you’re like me, you know the law states the State Board of Education must vote yea or nay on WEIC as a whole package, as it is submitted by the Commission. No amendments, no language changes, just a straight yes or no, and they had to vote. If you’re like me, you may also remember that in January the State Board decided to not vote at all on the plan, as they were legally required to do, and handed it back to Tony Allen with their reasoning for not supporting it. Remember that part about having to vote? Pepperidge Farm Remembers.
Representative Mike Ramone, Charter School Lobbyist
Mr. Ramone needs to read the regs pertaining to per student funding in public education. When a student moves from a District school to a Charter school, the tax money collected by the original district for spending on that student goes with the student to the charter. There is no fiscal “responsibility” borne by the Charter, the sending District is paying that child’s per-student expense. If Mr. Ramone doesn’t believe that, I have a $21 million charter bill Christina School District is paying this year for him to look at. Email me, Rep Ramone: brianstephan@gmail.com and I can help you understand how public schools are funded in this state.
Petition To Allow Parents To Opt Out Of Testing
As usual, please sign. Here’s the petition’s wording.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment is the new state assessment based on the Common Core State Standards for Delaware. Many states have adopted this assessment as part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, of which Delaware is a part. This consortium was approved by Governor Markell without any legislative approval.
Many parents in Delaware, as well as across the country, believe the Smarter Balanced Assessment, as well as the PARCC test in other states, is not an effective standardized test. Therefore, we are electing our Constitutional right to opt our children out of this assessment. We believe it is a parental right to choose the best educational outcome for our children. We also believe our children are not the property of the state. Many of us have experienced, at a minimum, vast confusion in regards to the opt out time period, which began in earnest in February of 2015, from our Governor, our Delaware Department of Education, our schools, and several administrators from our schools.
This legislation would help codify what is already our right, and would prevent the opted out students from adversely affecting the schools in Delaware. As well, this would also put all the school districts and charter schools in the state on the same level playing field based on a clear and distinct law.
College Remedial Courses And The State Test
Even though I know there are unique and deserving circumstances, I can’t help but wonder how kids needing remedial courses are even accepted into college, especially University of Delaware which touts itself as highly selective. Okay, I don’t really wonder. Remedial courses are a cash cow for colleges so I understand why they offer them. Having parents/students pay for non-credit courses makes achieving a degree take longer than four years which adds another semester, or two, in tuition and room and board fees… Cha-Ching!
QOD — How Can An Accountability Testing Scheme Produce Such Low SAT Scores?
We found out this week that approximately 25% of Delaware’s High school students are college-ready, in terms of their SAT scores. Leaving aside that SAT scoring is not the most reliable measure of college-readiness, what is the correlation between the SATs and the DCAS testing regime in Delaware’s schools? It seems to me that if DCAS measures what a kid is learning (yes, I know that is a BIG IF), and the kids are taking a curriculum that makes them ready for college, how can the SAT scores be so out of line with all of this testing? It is pretty remarkable to me that DCAS is used as an accountability test, but that it apparently all of that learning it measures doesn’t translate to better SAT scores.
The Takeover of Wilmington Public Schools
This issue has been percolating for awhile, especially since this was announced by the Governor’s office as a Major Education Initiative — and it turns out that this isn’t about education, but about moving around teachers and school leadership to continue to pretend to do something about Wilmington’s failing schools. The NJ writes about this today:
The Delaware Department of Education says six low-income schools in Wilmington are failing, and the way to fix them is to make the more than 200 teachers reapply for their jobs – and to hire elite principals at each school who won’t have to follow most district rules while earning annual salaries of $160,000.
Mark Murphy, secretary of education, says it’s necessary for teachers to reapply for their jobs to ensure that every educator in the six “priority” schools has the commitment and skill to improve student achievement, as measured by the state’s standardized tests.
Appoquinimink Names New Superintendent
Today the Appoquinimink School District is announcing that their next superintendent will be Matt Burrows, currently the principal of Redding Middle School. Burrows will replace retiring superintendent, Tony Marchio. Appo is the fastest growing school district in the state, so Mr. Burrows has his work cut out for him.
Guess I’ll Have To Listen To Jensen Today
Over at Kilroy’s, Nancy Willing states that John Young and Lillian Lowery will be on the Rick Jensen show today. Warning: Nancy’s info had better be correct! 😉 Consider this an open thread on the subject. Hey, maybe someone will answer my questions! My questions: 1. Who wrote the assessment plan? Specifically, the part that […]
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