1988. The year I graduated high school! In this look back at thirty years ago, I cover my life and the world we lived in. You may see some familiar faces. For the younger crowd looking at this, I have no doubt you will crack up at the society we called our own! But my generation owned the 1980s!
I keep meaning to do a follow-up to this. Three years late! No excuse! But it still amazes me that we were warned about specific things that could happen in Delaware with charter schools and we still went ahead with it.
Charter schools. Two words that bring up a great deal of conversation in Delaware. For some they have become the savior of public education. For others they find that they continue segregation in Delaware, are not accountable in the way traditional schools are, and they are the root cause of the corporate education reform movement that has swept across America over the past decade. In the 1990s, charter schools were created in Minnesota and California. By 1995, Delaware wanted to take a stab at it.
In 1995, six companies wanted to sponsor a new type of school in Delaware, a charter school: AstraZenaca (then called Zenaca Inc.), Christiana Care Health (then called Medical Center of Delaware), Delmarva Power, DuPont, Hercules Incorporated and Verizon (then called Bell Atlantic). They infused a $600,000 commitment into the school launch. Red Clay Consolidated School District President of the Board William Manning, and St. Marks…
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Last week, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the United States Department of Education officially released the state determination letters for implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). As I reported earlier this month, Delaware received a rating of “needs assistance”. In June, I reported the special education ratings for each school district and charter school. Both articles contain my thoughts on these ratings and how they don’t capture what it needs to.
The US DOE lags two years behind so these findings are based on the 2015-2016 school year in Delaware. This was the second year of the Smarter Balanced Assessment.
As part of their release, the US DOE included documents for each state on how they reached their determination. Below is the Delaware documents. Also included are the letters sent for IDEA Part B and IDEA Part C.
The Season Of Myths 