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The Delaware Department of Education’s plan to improve low-performing schools is drawing scrutiny from some educators, civil rights groups and state lawmakers.
Education Secretary Cindy Marten’s draft proposal includes a five-tiered system where schools would receive increasing levels of state support, and education officials could take over a low-performing school by Delaware as a last resort.
It comes as the state is working to revamp the current school funding formula to try to boost student performances, especially targeting low-income students, multilingual learners and students with disabilities.
The plan lays out statewide goals for 2028, including increasing third grade reading proficiency from 38% to 53%, raising eighth grade math proficiency from 26% to 35% and decreasing chronic absenteeism from 15% to 13%.
Mike Brinkner, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, said he questions rolling out an accountability plan before all the money that is needed to make access to a quality education equitable across the state has been invested.
“Right now, we are just not at a place where these schools have gotten the resources that they need, and then it becomes a situation where people who don’t have shoelaces are told, ‘Well, why didn’t you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps?’” he said. “They don’t have the resources to actually do that and we as a state have not followed through and held ourselves accountable to providing those school districts with those resources.”
The ACLU was one of several groups who sued the state in 2018, alleging the state was persistently underfunding low-income students, multilingual learners and children with disabilities. The parties settled in 2020.
A report issued as part of the court settlement found that Delaware needed to add $600 million to $1 billion to achieve educational equity. The state committed $100 million in the fiscal year 2027 budget.
