The Echo

Answer:  Pencader Rebuilding Board

Today's News Journal is reporting that as of tonight, Pencader's board will consist of just two members who will meet Monday to seat a new board from a slate of names submitted for the empty seats.  Readers can follow this thread of information with public commentary at www.transparentchristina.wordpress.com.  John Young has been following the Pencader news stories with gusto since the school was required to submit an amended 2012-13 budget to the state due to a
failure to reach required minimum enrollment targets by May 1.

Deceived. 


http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120624/NEWS03/306240050/The-lies-behind-diploma-mills?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home

This morning's edition of the News Journal greeted readers with an above-the-fold story about diploma mills with the Pencader Charter School Leader front and center.

A year ago, I put my reputation behind Pencader and joined with other Christina constituents to implore DOE give the school a second chance to continue to offer their commendable education to high school students despite the fiscal crisis that enveloped the school.  DOE conceded, Pencader's bricks and mortar filled with hopes and dreams - many of those dreams crushed during a very trying and at times painful 2011-12 school year. After reading this morning's story for a third, fourth, and fifth time, I find myself feeling deeply deceived. 

This morning, I am publicly requesting that the Pencader Board of Directors convene an emergency meeting and remove the school leader.  While Delaware's charter school leaders are not required by code, law, or regulation to hold a Ph.D., purporting to have one is gross misrepresentation and malfeasance.  It is more than a bad example, it is an insult to true educators who have earned their degrees from accredited educational institutions!  The Pencader Board must be accountable to their students, parents, employees, constituents, and tax payers. They cannot permit a school leader to continue to stretch the truth - this is not the example that should be set for our children who continue to struggle to hit a moving target and achieve proficiency.

If the Board of Directors fails to act quickly, I am calling on the Delaware Department of Education as the school's authorizer to intervene immediately. Anything less is simply not acceptable! Dan Cruce, John Carwell, Sec. of Education Murphy - the tax payers need to hear from you!

Schools Matter and apparently employment contracts do, too!  The much touted reform eduction school district, Nola, created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, finally gets a federal ruling.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/06/corporate-ed-reformers-after-katrina.html

Thank You, Anonymous, for the Tip!

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/more-applicants-pinellas-county-superintendent#comments

Christopher Ruszkowski has applied for Pinelles County Schools Superintendent. I find it ironic that Ruszkowski - a DE DOE RTTT/PZ hire - wants to lead a district whose board is planning to pass an anti-highstakes testing resolution!
 http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/category/gradebook-tags/pinellas-county-school-board 

Christopher Ruszkowski: Ruszkowski has worked for the Delaware Department of Education since 2010. He’s been team leader of the teacher and leader effectiveness unit since October 2011 and was deputy officer of the Race to the Top team for a year before that. He’s also worked for The New Teacher Project and Teach for America.

Link to Ruszkowski's resume - http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/sites/tampabay.com.blogs.gradebook/files/resume--ruszkowski--may_2012.doc

Anonymous, are the DE DOE floodgates about to open?

“Charters could be more integrated than traditional public schools. The great tragedy is that they’re more segregated,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a Washington think tank. “The charter school community is recognizing that to the extent that it’s seen as segregated, that’s a negative thing...” - Edweek, Studies Spotlight Charters Designed for Diversity 

(Shades of Purple are from Edweek, black is my comment)

Last week, Edweek.org published a story about integration in charter schools.  The story actually speaks volumes to the recent debate over the Newark Charter School Expansion.  Opponents of the expansion spoke passionately about the perception that NCS is not diversified - an assertion that NCS supporters deny.  Ultimately, then-Delaware Secretary of Education, Lillian Lowery, recommended that the State Board of Education approve the NCS expansion - with two conditions:

1) Since the lack of access to the federal free and reduced lunch program is a barrier to low income families who would otherwise seek to enroll their student at NCS, the Department of Education, as the authorizer, required the school to implement the lunch program commencing in the 2012-13 school year.

2) The NCS modification was also conditioned upon the development and implementation of significant outreach effort to those underrepresented populations.  Prior to implementation, the DOE must approve the outreach plan.

Excerpts From Edweek.org:

"Two new reports—one from the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, another from the Century Foundation and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council—examine charter schools that have racially and socioeconomically diverse enrollments as part of their school missions. Researchers and advocates say that there is increasing demand for such schools, but that national educational priorities and policies are not necessarily stacked in their favor..."

"But research from the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, based at the University of California, Los Angeles, indicates that many charter schools are more racially segregated than regular public schools, many of which have also become less diverse in recent decades..."

"The NAPCS brief, “A Mission to Serve: How Public Charter Schools are Designed to Meet the Diverse Demands of Our Communities,” presents both approaches as potentially successful school models, but says that “the past decade or so ... has seen a noteworthy rise in high-performing public charter schools with missions intentionally designed to serve racially and economically integrated student populations.” These schools differ from charter schools that are required to be diverse in order to meet targets set by districts or authorizers..."

"Both reports also include recommendations for federal and state policymakers, including suggestions that charter schools be permitted to receive federal startup funding even if they use a weighted lottery—rather than a random drawing—in order to create an integrated student population."

Under current federal law - Charters that employ a weighted lottery are excluded from elibility to receive federal startup funding.

The DOE has pushed another email out to school districts of identified schools to encourage participation in their Talent Rentention Program - essentially an incentive pay system for teachers of students who show a certain level of growth in their DCAS-tested subjects.  The very waterdowned version of this program is that these incentives are not schoolwide and do not apply to all teachers and/or adults who contribute to the education of the students in these schools. 


I have shared my personal thoughts regarding this program with DOE:

Dear Mr. Ruszkowski,

I am in receipt of the following email and attached letter. Thank You for providing additional information regarding the Talent Retention Program for Year One.

It is my personal feeling that participation in the program as currently designed is demoralizing to the many wonderful educators in my district who are dedicated to seeing our children achieve college and career-readiness. It takes a village to educate a child. In Christina, that village exists across the City of Newark municipal boundaries and into unincorporated portions of New Castle County , stretching down 15 miles of highway to include approximately two square miles of the City of Wilmington. Yet, in each school, regardless of location, I have front-line educators teaching children who fit the same demographic as those students in the schools identified by DOE as being eligible for the talent-retention program. My village consists of more than math and English/language arts teachers. Art, music, gym, science and social studies teachers, special educators, librarians, school nurses, and the oft-forgotten paraprofessionals, custodians and child nutrition service workers, bus drivers and their aids, administrators and secretaries, interventionists, and specialists of every kind - they, too, are vital members of my village who make an impact on student achievement each and every day. To deny any one of them the opportunity to participate in the program so that a handful of select educators can is simply implausible to me.

To date, the talent retention program is far too under-developed and likely under-funded to garner my support. Thus, I preview to you that should participation in this program come before my school board to be voted upon, I cannot support it.

It takes a village, Mr. Ruszkowski, to forge a well-rounded education, not just the blacksmith.

Elizabeth A. Scheinberg

Member, Board of Education

Christina School District