On Thursday, Governor Markell unveiled his FY 2013 proposed budget, which recommends increasing the state’s investment in public education by roughly $63 million, or 5.7% over current year funding levels. In particular, the governor recommends appropriating: $27.4 million for an Educational Sustainment Fund, an unrestricted pot of money intended to compensate for the loss of [...]
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 [...]
State of the State: Governor Markell Remains Dedicated to Education
On January 19th, Governor Markell gave his annual State of the State address to the General Assembly. This speech provides an opportunity to gauge the priorities of the executive branch, and this year Governor Markell did not disappoint. He noted a continued commitment to supporting business and bringing jobs to Delaware, attracting and keeping business [...]
Introducing Melissa Hopkins
My name is Melissa Hopkins, and I’ve recently joined the Rodel Foundation as the Government Affairs Manager. Prior to joining the Rodel Foundation, I spent five years staffing elected officials at both New Castle County Council and the Delaware State House of Representatives. I was born and raised in Delaware and am a proud product of Delaware’s [...]
Delaware’s Charter School Law (Still) Middle of the Pack
According to a recently-released report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Delaware’s charter school law ranks 22nd out of the 42 states that allow charter schools, as measured against 20 “essential components of strong public charter school law.” This ranking is down from 18th last year, a decline largely due to being leapfrogged [...]
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 [...]
Happy 2012: Full Steam Ahead
As we take stock of 2011 and look to 2012, we ask ourselves: Are we closer to creating world-class schools for Delaware’s children? For me the answer is clearly, “yes.” In fact, if Delaware’s public school system were a train, it would be moving at full steam. Why? In 2011, the state adopted higher standards, [...]
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 [...]
Delaware Has Long Trek Ahead Around Next Generation Learning
Digital Learning Now! recently released Delaware’s state report card, and the initial results are not promising, demonstrating that we have significant work ahead of us before the necessary policies are in place to ensure our students benefit from high-quality next generation learning opportunities. The report card, which measures our alignment to 72 metrics based on [...]
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 [...]
