The Department of Education (DOE), school districts, school boards, and the state teachers' union are hiding information from the public that should be available to everyone. The following are a list of some areas in which Delawareans are kept in the dark.
Poor Academic Performance
The most significant lack of transparency involves the state's own Smarter Balanced assessment which indicates that only 41% of students can read at grade level and only 31% of students can do math at grade level. This information can be found on the state Report Card on the DOE site. But few know that it is even there and it is hard to find.
Misleading News Releases
In August of 2024 when the above scores were released, the headline read: "2024 State Assessment Results Show Pandemic Recovery Continuing". Yet the first sentence of the story stated "In English language arts... students scored the same as in 2023. In mathematics (scores were) up 1 percentage point from last year." An improvement of 1 point in math hardly qualifies for "continuing recovery". This is just one example of the many misleading news releases from the Delaware DOE. To learn more click here.
Poor National Performance
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is administered by the U.S. Department of Education every other year in math and reading in 4th and 8th grades. The average of the scores for both grades and for both subjects places Delaware 4th from the bottom out of all 50 states.
Denied Freedom of information Act (FOIA) Requests
I have tried many times to obtain information on education in Delaware and have continually faced barriers in doing so. I have been denied FOIA requests asking for a list of teachers who do and do not pay union dues despite the fact that organizations have asked for this information in other states and received it without a problem.
Missing Information
A lot of information that should be available is not. For example, on the Report Card for each school there is a dropdown menu for student to staff ratios but it is currently blank for every school in the state.
Using Out-of-Date Spending Information
When the DOE hired the American Institutes for Research to determine what was needed to improve equity in our schools, they used a 2021-2022 per pupil spending of $17,419 to calculate their recommendations. But right after the AIR report came out in December of 2023, the per pupil spending on the DOE site was posted for 2023 at $20,231. Thus over $400 mill of the $500 mill to $1 bill spending increase recommended by the AIR report had already occurred.
This fact is not being acknowledged by the Public Education Funding Commission which is currently discussing increasing spending based on the AIR study.
If one looks at the total education revenue for the state on the DOE site and divides that by the number of students, one gets over $3 billion divided by 142,000 students which results in a revenue of $22,323 per student which is a discrepancy of over $2000 per student which would put Delaware in the top 5 states in spending.
Delay In Implementation of Science of Reading
Delawareans may be aware that a Science of Reading (SoR, aka phonics) bill was passed but they are unaware that districts do not need to actually implement phonics until 2028!
No Required Science of Reading Curriculum
Despite the passing of the SoR bill , there is no early literacy curriculum for the whole state. Instead the DOE has provided a list of SoR curricula that districts can pick from and there is no central location where this information can be found.
Academics Not Discussed at School Board Meetings
At monthly school board meetings, topics such as excellent music and sports performance are celebrated each month. Yet there is almost never any discussion of the poor academic performance of the schools and what should be done to improve it. Families are often unaware of the poor academic performance of their children's schools.
Rejection of School Profile Bill
A bill was proposed last session that would have required the DOE to provide more information on each school's "Report Card" and to make it accessible with one click from the DOE home page. The bill would have also allowed parents to compare one school's performance with another's. This bill stalled in the Senate.
Next Steps
Instead of continuing to hide this information, the organizations responsible for educating Delaware students must share the above information with the public. An important first step would be to make the DOE site more user friendly and a second step would be to require schools to begin teaching phonics now.
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