A Message From Sean Goward, Candidate For Delaware Governor

Delaware candidate for Governor Sean Goward is asking for YOUR help.  No matter what your political views are, everyone deserves a shot to speak when they run for office.  It can’t just be the blues and the reds that get to debate, no matter where it is.  This message also applies to Andrew Groff, the gubernatorial candidate for the Green Party as well!

The most recent poll out of Quinnipiac on this issue has debate inclusion at a very favorable 62%.  Delaware can do better than that though.  Let’s get 100% and be fair to ALL the candidates!

Good afternoon,

Whether you support my campaign or not, I would like to ask your support in favor of an open and transparent election process. University of Delaware Center for Political Communication has a requirement that we meet a 10% poll threshold in a professionally conducted public opinion survey. I’m not sure how many of you have received phone calls asking you who you intend to vote for, but for the calls I’ve gotten, despite being on the ballot, unopposed in my party, I was not one of the options.

The market of ideas only improves with more options, and I’m not asking you to buy my ideas, or to vote for me. While the LP presidential nominee is working hard to meet his 15% threshold for debating on the national stage, more than 75% of people polled support having third party candidates on the debate stage. In an election year that is marked by a distaste for a lack of options, what I am asking for is that we leverage the support of the people of Delaware for allowing your Libertarian candidate to stand on the debate stage next to Congressman Carney and State Senator Colin Bonini , and represent the ideals of Liberty. 

If you would like to hear another voice outside the mainstream of options provided, please call or write to the University of Delaware Center for Political Communications and ask them to revisit their exclusionary policy that favors only the two party system. Thank you.

Yours in Liberty,
Sean

I would LOVE to see Sean Goward debate with Carney and Bonini.  Groff as well.  Let’s make it happen!

Contact Info to make this happen:

UD CPC
Email: prbrewer@udel.edu
Phone: (302) 831-7771

 

There Is No Conflict Between Opting Out of Tests and Fighting Competency-Based Education

Diane Ravitch's blog

What is competency-based education? Twenty or thirty years ago, it referred to skill-based education, and critics complained that CBE downgraded the importance of knowledge.

Today CBE has a different meaning. It refers to teaching and assessment that is conducted online, where students’ learning is continuously monitored, measured, and analyzed. CBE is invariably susceptible to data-mining of children, gathering Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that can be aggregated and used without the knowledge or permission of parents.

The first time that I heard of CBE (although it was not called that) was in a meeting in August 2015 with The State Commissioner of Education in New York, MaryEllen Elia, after her first month in office. I organized a discussion between Commissioner Elia and several board members of NYSAPE (New York State Allies for Public Education), the group that created New York State’s massive opt out that year (and again this year). It…

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Smarter Balanced Assessment Went Under A Peer Review In Delaware…Where’s The Report?

On August 18th, the Delaware State Board of Education held a work session before their regular meeting.  At this session was Jon Cohen, the Vice-President of American Institutes for Research and Tony Alpert, the Executive Director of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Question… if the test is computer adaptive for each student, then not every student receives the same test.  So how could there possibly ever be mean scores involved with a test that is never the same?  Is that why Delaware Governor Jack Markell called this the best test ever made at a New America conference last year?  Here is the presentation:

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That was the presentation.  As you can see, our stalwart State Board of Education took very detail minutes of the work session…

Meanwhile, the Delaware DOE had a meeting with all the district test coordinators on 8/29/16.

Can someone please tell me how Component V from the DPAS-II teacher evaluation system is listed as a “Test Security Incident” for Smarter Balanced?  That seems kind of odd in my opinion.  In the below document, it states the Smarter Balanced Assessment went under a peer review as required by ESEA.  But who was this peer review submitted to?  They talk about “CFA consultants” in the document.  Upon searching for “cfa”, I believe this means “confirmatory factor analysis” based on this document.  Or is that the name of the company doing this “peer review”?  I hope it isn’t like Florida’s peer review that was making everyone ask “Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?”

If this report was due in August, how come we have yet to see a copy of this federally required peer review?  Sounds like a future FOIA!

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