Gov. Carney signs education bills into law Monday

DELAWARE- Governor John Carney put pen to paper Monday moving forward a couple of bills related to education. One of them is the Digital Citizenship Education Act which required First State schools to implement media literacy requirements in K through 12.

“The reality is that young people struggle with both healthy online behavior and understanding the ramifications of their actions for themselves and for others, and like adults also struggle online with identifying fact from fiction,” Sen. Sarah McBride said.

Sen. Sarah McBride said it’s critical we better prepare the students of today for the realities of tomorrow and teach them how to navigate the internet responsibly.

“We see that there is a dual crisis in this country of online bullying and online disinformation and those crises they have a corrosive effect on our health, on our economy, and of course on our democracy,” Sen. McBride said.

While we’re told it’s important schools start to fill this gap, it’s also crucial they have all the resources to help students learn to read. “Our reading scores have really gone down in the last 10 to 20 years and we want to see that turn around,” Sen. Sturgeon said. Another bill Governor Carney sign will hopefully support that effort. It requires all teachers to have training in evidence based reading instruction teaching students the letters and the sounds those letters make. “This is just basic phonics, something that’s been around forever; unfortunately, some people have veered off course and are not teaching how to read using phonics,” Sen. Sturgeon said.

But, we’re told it’s not just about getting reading scores up, more importantly, it’s about the children behind those scores.

“Why it matters is because those children who struggle to read, who aren’t reading on level by the end of third grade, they are at very high risk for dropping out of high school, for incarceration, for underemployment, and unemployment,” Sen. Sturgeon said.

Another bill that was signed Monday will require students to participate in a universal reading screening to identify potential reading deficiencies and allow early intervention and prevention.