Tucked away in President Obama’s $3.8 trillion federal budget was a $5 billion competitive grant program aimed at elevating the teaching profession to its rightful status – which could have significant and long-lasting effects on teacher quality throughout the United States. The fund, called the RESPECT Project (Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching), [...]
About brett
Delaware Still Leads National Pack Despite Mid-Course Corrections
Secretary Lowery recently announced changes to DPAS II for this year as well as highlighting that more changes are upcoming for the next school year – all of which will impact various decisions, including bonuses for “highly-effective” educators and tenure decisions. For this school year, all teachers will be evaluated based upon Components I-IV, which [...]
Waiver Presents Opportunity to Reorient State’s Turnaround Strategy
After seeking input from various stakeholders throughout the state, the Department of Education will submit their final ESEA waiver application to the feds on February 6th, outlining our state’s vision for education reform in the coming years – with a particular focus on revamping our accountability system for school recognition and support. Parts I and [...]
Delaware Maintains C+ Average As a Few States Pass Us By
Delaware maintained our C+ average while falling three places from last year to 25th among states according to Education Week’s recently released Quality Counts report, which measures states’ progress across six categories (chance for success, K-12 achievement, transitions and alignment, school finance analysis, the teaching profession, and standards, assessments, and accountability). Key findings from the [...]
Teacher Effectiveness Study Offers Critical Lessons
Teachers exemplifying certain knowledge and skills outlined in various teaching frameworks, including the one used in Delaware, help students achieve greater academic gains according to the second-year study of the Bill & Melinda Gates’ Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project. The project, which was launched in 2009, seeks to determine the common threads among [...]
Let’s Not Just Refine, but Reimagine Accountability
The Department of Education recently released the initial draft of our ESEA waiver application– demonstrating Delaware’s initial vision for next generation accountability while leaving room for input and improvement. Based upon Delaware’s initial draft, we are proposing to: Establish the goal of reducing achievement gaps, among all subgroups, in half over six years (e.g. raising [...]
Delaware Has the Data Capacity – Now the Tough Work Begins
Delaware, like many states, has built the necessary data infrastructure to track students throughout their academic careers; however, tough work remains for all stakeholders, from policymakers to teachers, to successfully understand and act upon the information, according to Data Quality Campaign’s Data for Action 2011. The report highlights Delaware’s progress over the past year, in [...]
ESEA Waiver Presents Opportunity to Build Upon Delaware’s Reform Efforts
Delaware will join approximately 40 other states seeking a waiver from requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – providing us an unprecedented opportunity to build upon our current Race to the Top efforts around data use and teacher quality. Based upon Delaware’s initial draft, we are proposing to: Continue our efforts around [...]
