Hey State Auditor! What do you think; felony charges for teachers, administrators, DEDOE employee and testing company involved in cheating or manipulating DCAS data?
Hey Jack, Eddie Murphy said, “you know that I know that you know”. What and election year this is going to be!
Hey Lois Lane! I am getting a whiff of something big brewing.
Christina School District’s Bayard Middle School is no longer in the Partnership Zone, which is a group of the state’s worst-performing schools. That means the school will not be required to make intensive changes and it will not be getting extra money from the state’s $119 million Race to the Top grant.
Instead, the state will focus that time and money on Laurel Middle School in the Laurel School District.
However, the state skipped the next school in line, Warner Elementary. The state says that it skipped Warner and opted for Laurel because the Red Clay School District already has three Partnership Zone schools and there’s a fear that adding another would overwhelm the district with that work.
Warner is rated Academic Watch lowest of all ratings and has been at the bottom of the rating barrel for 5 years. So because the Delaware Department of Education fear Red Clay will be overwhelmed it decided on it’s own without consulting the Red Clay School Board. But Warner may be better off not being a PZ because the capacity-gap that exist at the Delaware Department of Education would overwhelm their role in a Warner PZ. However, Warner students are in greater need that Laurel’s and than a documented fact!
I am here to tell you, if ever a existing public school were to convert to a charter it will be Warner! Once the PZ comes back to Warner the plan will be to close it an reopen it as a charter. Currently there is not enough board votes to make that possible but next year there just might be. Would it be a good thing for Warner ? Perhaps yes! Red Clay seems too busy pacifying the suburban affluent with new neighborhood schools at the same time offering no middle or high school programming in Red Clay’s Wilmington schools. The city kids can’t enjoy middle and high school neighborhood schools and Red Clay continues the force busing of minorities via assigned feeder-patterns. But do note, in Red Clay’s defense they wanted to make Warner a K-8 program but the some racist neighbors on the Hill opposed and pressured local legislators to convince Red Clay to back-down. Then there was a move to allow a charter school to operate within Warner using unused space as Warner was at 50% building capacity. Some say Warner has been an unwanted wart on Red Clay’s ass and they would love to unload it. Complex issues here folks and rest assure there is some type of agenda.
Delaware state legislators are clueless to the backroom deals that go on at the Delaware Department of Education. DEDOE even “created” a job for a Race to The Top “team-player”.
I am here to tell you in 4-5 years our state legislators will have an education nightmare on their hands. Local taxpayers are going to be forced to fund Race to The Top and PZ programs. In fact, DEDOE is going to add more PZ schools next year and not offer any funding and require the local district to pay. Markell is planning to cut at least 30 million dollars of state funding to school districts and charter schools next yea and more if Obama’s Job’s Bill crashes and burns. Markell cut state SRO funding this year and the district may not be able to afford them next year.
As I said, major capacity-gap at the Delaware Department of Education. Also, in my opinion Christina School district should be compensated for the collaboration time spend on Bayard’s PZ. Their is a thing call productive cost even in school districts.
Governor Markell refuses to address the capacity-gap at the Delaware Department of education! Perhaps he is that gap! One good thing for Markell is, his network of reformist supporting less local board control and more Dover and Washington control will stand-down and not make his failure a campaign issue.
For the first time, student test score data will be used as one measure for rating teachers in Delaware. This comes one year after the state rolled out a new computer-based assessment for students that helps measure test score growth by requiring students to take the exam several times during the school year. The test score data are part of a five-component ranking system that also takes into account other factors
The test measures growth and teachers evaluations will be base on growth even if the student doesn’t meet standards. However, its a start and is fair. Now I hope Markell can find ways to hold parents more accountable.
Should Delaware fail to create the system it promised in the Race to the Top grant application, the federal government has threatened to withhold $13.8 million of the state’s grant, according to a U.S. Department of Education letter sent in July approving the state’s one-year delay in using student data to rate teachers. The federal government made this threat as a condition for allowing the state to roll out a modified teacher rating system this school year.
“They gave us the extension, but it’s an exception with consequences for failure,” said Dan Cruce, deputy secretary for the state Department of Education.
Well there is is! All about the money and pleasing the federal government. So when the money is gone I guess that pot of reward money will be on the backs of the local taxpayers?
What happens to teachers who receive poor ratings ? What happens to the Teach for America teachers whom many are gone in two years? Will the Teach for America program be held accountable for those ratings? Should they give money back?
None of this will stop the forward progress to privatize public schools and the takeover of local school board by Dover and Washington. Goodbye local control. None of this will stop the flow of education money to Wall Street!
