Delaware's 5 gubernatorial candidates discuss education policies

So I hope you don't mind, but this is my running list of issues as a parent of a Red Clay student in first grade with another soon to enter kindergarten (feel free to tell me if I'm off base):

I draw on Red Clay School District as the example I know. I would bet at least some of this is relevant to other Delaware School Districts.

Red Clay School District Is Too Big

The district serves parts of downtown Wilmington, Greenville, and lots in between and around, over 16,000 students across 28 schools. One-size-fits-all education will never work for such a large population and socio-economic variety. Believing that one-size-fits-all ignores the plain truth that successful education is as much about the homes children return to as it is the schools they attend.

Large school districts like Red Clay, are incredibly top-heavy with power concentrated among a handful of administrators. When the leadership is poor, everyone feels it and for a long time. When someone below the power structure has a good idea, it gets silenced. Smaller school districts with smaller power would be better suited to adapt to their students' needs.

In States with successful public education, school districts have 1-2 schools for elementary, 1-2 schools for middle, and 1-2 schools for high school. In successful school districts, Administrators aren't gods.

Pre-K Is Too Limited

Pre-K in Red Clay is available primarily for students with IEPs. Pre-K has limited capacity. This is an incredible burden for parents. No Delawarean should be paying childcare costs that are the equivalent of mortgages along with higher school taxes. In States with successful public education, Pre-K has been available and fully-funded through school taxes for decades. In Red Clay, parents pay more, but don't get more.

IEP Students Are Identified, Gifted Students Are Not

On the State level, Delaware devotes tons of resources to identifying and providing services to children with special needs. This is great! But other States with successful public education also mandate the identification of, and provide services to, children who develop early. Other states recognize that it is as wrong to neglect its gifted students, and stifle them, as it is to neglect IEP students and deny them assistance. Delaware has no such mandate.

In Red Clay, gifted students often aren't identified until 3rd grade. And tracking doesn't officially occur before 5th. This becomes an incredible failure of schools to stimulate the top-performing students early on and set higher educational trajectories early on--college appropriate trajectories. The failure is an incredible waste of time for students coming from all socio-economic backgrounds. Kids don't need to come from wealthy families to be smart.

Elementary Mathematics Curriculum in Red Clay Is Slow

Red Clay teaches according to Common Core. Despite some quirks, Common Core is actually good at stimulating problem solving from a variety of angles. But Common Core is also slow for a lot of students. This problem is consistent with Red Clay not recognizing students who are ready to practice and master more material than their peers. It is also consistent with setting a low academic trajectory that isn't college bound. When a student exhausts Common Core assignments half-way through the school year, no new chance for progress or challenge is offered.

Many Parents Who Have Benefited From Higher Education Reject Public Schools

A lot of students who have Red Clay feeder patterns don't attend Red Clay schools. Parents with education and means prefer to send their children to schools that have much better academic reputations. As a result, the kids of white collar parents don't attend public schools. And the white collar parents don't participate in school district governance. This means that the parents who have benefited most from education, understand what a good education is, and have the most influence to effect positive change in public schools, have largely checked out of the public school system.

Charters and Choice Cannibalize Student Bases

Charters and School choice also destabilize student bases. When a school gets a bad reputation, every motivated parent hopes to choice into whatever charter is popular. If it isn't a charter, it is one of the public magnets. This further weakens the student and parent populations. What is left in the unpopular schools are the students who didn't have motivated parents, or were unlucky, or both.

Sadly, much of this is self-inflicted. Red Clay destruction of Alexis I. DuPont deserves more attention. Over a decade ago, it was a great high school. But Cab Calloway and Conrad siphoned off its top 25th percentile performers. The parents of the remaining students had a choice to make: continue to send students to an academically decapitated school, or find a better environment for their children. They chose the latter, and today, A.I. DuPont struggles to maintain 500 students, cannot offer a complete range of extra-curricular activities, has a 15% student population that doesn't speak English, and has an armada of police on standby. A.I. DuPont is so bad that no parent with a child in its feeder pattern should use it as a high school. That any high school in Red Clay is this bad is a catastrophic failure of leadership. The high school has been in free-fall for years.

Students Are Socially Fragmented

Delaware's Choice system, charters, and magnets ensures that students from the same neighborhoods rarely attend the same schools, and if they do, it is not for very long. Student Cohorts get shuffled and reshuffled, once around the end of 5th grade and again after 8th grade. Some students might hop around even more. The net effect is that Red Clay makes friendships and socializing between peers and families a fleeting thing. There is little sense of lasting community.

Magnet Schools Suck the top 25% From Every Other High School

If your top students are all concentrated at Cab Calloway, Conrad, and The Charter School, what is left at the rest? This speaks for itself. This sort of education system resembles the elitism that is Texas public education. Delaware student fates are cast as early as the end of 5th grade.

The demographics of the magnets should be examined, too. If, for example, an influx of formerly private school students suddenly happens at those few sought-after high schools, something is terribly wrong.

Curricula Are Bought

Teachers in Delaware often don't work with their own materials. Materials from publishers, some even with rigid conservative ideologies, are used. Delaware must let its teachers create their own curricula (and hire teachers who are capable of doing so). This is at the heart of what makes teaching a profession and an art. Teaching must not be reduced to mindless work.

The Superintendent's Priority Is Self-Promotion, Not Education

He's dapper, but the Superintendent's school district is in the crapper. Parents of Red Clay students are regularly emailed propaganda about how great Red Clay School District is. At the start of May, we were told to celebrate our principals. During the tax referendum, we endured a bombardment of emails, robo calls, and text messages that would make the RNC/DNC proud. It is all lies. Graduation rates, college readiness, and proficiencies in reading, math, and science are atrocious across all grade levels. If you factor out the magnet high schools, performance 9-12 in Red Clay is abysmal:

Dickinson (graduation rate 80%): https://www.schooldigger.com/go/DE/schools/0130000275/school.aspx , https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/delaware/districts/red-clay-consolidated-school-district/the-john-dickinson-school-4630

McKean (graduation rate 85%): https://www.schooldigger.com/go/DE/schools/0130000274/school.aspx , https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/delaware/districts/red-clay-consolidated-school-district/thomas-mckean-high-school-4629

Alexis I. DuPont (graduation rate 79%): https://www.schooldigger.com/go/DE/schools/0130000276/school.aspx , https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/delaware/districts/red-clay-consolidated-school-district/dupont-alexis-i-high-school-4631

Bussing and Car Lines Stink

Bus stops are consolidated and in unsafe locations. Some routes simply cannot maintain schedule. Late bus arrivals and car lines delay school start times. Driver pay and schools without practical geographic limits cause this. Red Clay Transportation fails to acknowledge safety issues.

PTOs Fundraise

Schools have such poor fiscal management that PTOs have prioritized fundraising to the exclusion of watchdogging. There is no effective parental influence on school reform.

teacher in NJ. How is it teaching in Delaware? I have curriculum to cover, but I have the freedom to teach it how I want. Is this the case?