Governor Carney’s Nomination For The Next State Board Of Education Member Is…

Yeah, the State Board of Education isn’t going anywhere.  Delaware Governor John Carney nominated the next person and this nomination is being considered by the Senate Executive Committee tomorrow.  Who is it?Dr. Dennis Loftus.  He was the Superintendent of the New Castle County Vo-Tech School District.  He was also the Director of the Delaware Academy of School Leadership (DASL) based out of the University of Delaware.  He then became an educational leadership consultant.  He was even on the Vision 2015 Steering Committee.  Loftus served on various legislative task forces including the Public Compensation Committee and the Blue Collar Task Force.  Now he is the next nominee for the soon-to-be-funded-by-the-DOE State Board of Education.

In a blog post on Susan Ohanian from 2003, Loftus had this to say about No Child Left Behind:

“You’ve got to be perfect every time,” said Dennis Loftus, former superintendent of the New Castle County Vo-Tech School District who heads the school leadership academy at the University of Delaware. “That’s a pretty tough standard, particularly if you’re supposed to be making improvement at the same time.”

Under the law, the academic targets rise higher in increments until 2014, when every subgroup must be at 100 percent proficiency, an admirable but unrealistic goal, many said.

“You look at that and say, ‘How can you win?’ ” Loftus said.

While we are long past the days of No Child Left Behind, Delaware’s goals in the Every Student Succeeds Act require every student subgroup to perform better each year on the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  Will Loftus’ 2003 way of thinking play out in modern times?

The picture I had in this article did NOT have Dr. Loftus in it.  Thanks to Ron Russo for pointing this out!