The Office of Accountability and Assessment is gone. Previously led by Penny Schwinn, who departed the DOE earlier this month, it is now part of the Teaching & Learning Branch but only as the Office of Assessment. Dr. Carolyn Lazar is still listed as the Interim Director of The Office of Assessment, in the sub-section of the Teaching & Learning Branch which is still led by Michael Watson. There is a sub-section under the new Deputy Secretary, Karen-Field Rogers, called Performance Management, but that is showing as vacant. This is echoed with the Data Management office. Former Deputy Secretary David Blowman has taken over Field-Rogers slot as Associate Secretary Financial Management & Operations. It looks like he still oversees the Charter School Office. Chris Ruszkowski is still running the show in the Teacher/Leader Effectiveness Unit.
It appears the DOE is in the process of updating their website, because if you look under their “leadership” tab, it still shows Penny Schwinn there, and Blowman as the Deputy Secretary. There are many such errors on their website. If you look under the Exceptional Children Resources group, it still shows Sarah Celestin listed even though she left the DOE last summer to become the Special Education Director at Red Clay Consolidated School District.
The DOE has seen some key departures and changes in the past few months since the new Secretary of Education, Dr. Steven Godowsky, took the helm. With the amount of work the DOE receives based on the never-ending barrage of changes implemented by the State Board of Education and the feds, with more coming every day, on top of compliance issues, implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, charter school issues always going on, priority schools, assessment changes, state budgets and everything else is the DOE staff reaching a point where they are actually understaffed? Do they have too much on their plate? In some areas I would say so, but in others there is a lot of wasted money and resources going out. Like the TLEU. Every time I look, they are paying someone to come up with the latest report on Educator Effectiveness. Or the Office of Assessment, constantly regurgitating report after report about Smarter Balanced and everything that goes with it. Figuring out the Rubiks Cube that is the Delaware DOE is always a challenge…
The Season Of Myths 