Because Congressional action on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is stalled, the US Department of Education offered states, on a rolling application basis, ESEA Flexibility through a conditional waiver process. The Obama administration is utilizing statutory authority to grant conditional provisional waivers in exchange for state development and implementation of key reform strategies pertaining to: College- and career-ready academic standards; Differentiated accountability systems; and Teacher/leader evaluation systems based on student growth/achievement. The public education system must be transparent and accountable to teachers, principals, students, families, and communities. We believe that our families, communities and schools deserve
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School has started and most units are busy with Back to School Membership Drives. We know that building and maintaining your membership base is crucial to the viability of your unit and we are here to support you and ensure the success of your unit. As we continue to refine the process for the distribution of membership cards and submitting monthly membership reports, we will be holding a state wide conference call on Tuesday October 6th at 7pm. The call is open to all Membership Chairs and/or any Board Member interested in understanding the process. We suggest that at minimum,
Read more →On Wednesday September 2, 2015 the Delaware Department of Education released the overall results of the Smarter Balanced Assessments in Math and ELA English Language Arts). Overall, the proficiency rates are exactly where we expected they would be, especially for schools with a higher concentration of at risk populations. We have long maintained that an assessment is only effective when weighed against its intended use and purpose. The true purpose of assessments should be to determine gaps in learning and ensure that the state is directing the appropriate resources to the students and schools that need it most. As parents, it is
Read more →Delaware PTA Membership Drives 2015-2016 It’s a brand new school year and thus the start to our many local units’ Membership Drives! With more and more of our communications being sent through electronic channels as a nation, PTA continues to update our procedures to meet the needs of our busy leaders and recognized membership. Delaware PTA, along with National PTA, continues to evolve our PTA efforts too, and the distribution of our annual membership cards is one of our more direct undertakings… And the most difficult logistically! So this year, Delaware PTA is moving to an electronic, centralized process for
Read more →With the start of the new school year just around the corner, National PTA and Univision invite you to participate in the webinar, “Clave al Éxito: Engaging Spanish-Speaking Families.” Join National PTA’s Multicultural Membership Development Manager Armen Alvarez and Univision Communications’ Partnership Engagement Manager Adriana Flores-Ragade to learn more about Clave al Éxito and how to leverage the tool to engage Spanish-speaking families in your school community. The webinar will build on the Hispanic Family Engagement Symposium that took place during the 2015 National PTA Convention in June. Register for one of our four webinar opportunities. Tues., Aug. 18, 1
Read more →Hello and happy summer We are currently looking for individuals from the local PTA units to serve on the Delaware PTA Scholarship Committee for the 2015-16 school years. Under the direction of our Scholarship Chair, the committee is responsible for promoting PTA’s scholarships to local high schools, evaluating submissions, and awarding the scholarship. The committee will also work to develop some sort of donor campaign and solicit funders for additional scholarships or for contributions to the existing funds. Most work can be done electronically from your home and time commitment averages about 2-3 hours a month. If this sounds like
Read more →As parents, advocates, teachers and administrators dig through the annual IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) performance report; everyone knows that Delaware’s needs improvement status means that we are still failing a very large portion of or students with disabilities. The outcome is that these at risk children will continue to fall short of their potential. Worse yet is that while Delaware might be improving, the rate of improvement is so slow, that at best it will be decades before we are even close to this goal. We are simply not keeping up with the rate at which best practices
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