As part of the Safe School Drinking Water Act, the State of Delaware is sampling the water in all Delaware schools to ensure that the water students have to drink is safe. Using a grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Delaware Division of Public Health, the state will begin testing lead levels in all schools. This requirement …
This story was originally published in August 2022. Delaware’s 2022 test scores were released this August, and they aren’t pretty. Just 30% of Delaware students in grades three to eight met grade-level math requirements, while 42% earned a proficient score in English language arts. These scores come from the state-administered Smarter Balanced Assessment, an end-of-the-year summative test that measures the …
Delaware’s Equalization Committee has agreed to not make any decisions on whether to freeze or change the state’s equalization formula, which affects school funding, until next year. The purpose of the equalization formula is to allocate state resources to districts inversely based on their ability to raise revenues through their local property tax base. “It’s to try to help those …
Delaware test scores have fallen to the bottom of the heap since 2019, with some worse than any other state, according to the Nation’s Report Card, which was released Monday. From 2019 to 2022, the average scores for Delaware fourth-graders on the math assessment dropped by 14 points, the steepest of any state. “In Delaware specifically, our scores were decimated,” …
Delaware’s teacher union proposed a new salary schedule Monday that includes a base pay of $60,000. Of that base pay, $42,000 would come from the state — $12,000 more than it’s currently paying. Under the plan, teacher salaries would be raised over three years, costing the state $134.5 million in total. By the final year, total teacher salaries would cost …
Ashley Lockwood, a fifth-grade teacher at Lulu Ross Elementary in Milford School District, has been named the 2023 Delaware Teacher of the Year. “Teaching children has been one of the greatest blessings and gifts that God has ever given me, and for that, I will be forever grateful,” Lockwood said during the award ceremony Tuesday night. “Thank you to my …
A new digital and uniform process to register children for kindergarten in the First State was unveiled to an audience of 25 Tuesday at the Wilmington Public Library. “Having a consistent process throughout Delaware allows libraries and other agencies to provide quick support and assistance to parents who are registering their children for school for the very first time,” said …
As public school districts continue to face teaching shortages, the State of Delaware has created an Alternative Routes to Certification (ARTC) program. The program is a non-traditional method to become a licensed and certified teacher in Delaware. “Simply put, participants are a full-time teacher of record while taking courses from an approved Delaware ARTC program,” Alison May, Public Information Officer …
Nine Delaware school districts have been awarded millions from the Department of Education to buy instruction materials for 99 schools with more than 60,720 students statewide. Districts and charter schools apply for the competitive grants, and not all applications were accepted. “Since 2016 we have seen how our districts and charters have used these grants to build their teams’ capacity …
The Delaware Department of Education announced last week it has hired a Virginia consultant to study the state’s public education funding system. As today’s wisecracker would say: Good luck with that. How the money trickles down to the classroom is complex, and it follows a funding system established in the 1940s. The state’s population then was 286,000, compared to today’s …
