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If you are a public education stakeholder
in southeastern PA come show your support at tonight’s meeting.
Dinniman
Announces Meeting to Discuss Governor’s Proposed Education Budget Cuts
WEST CHESTER (February 7) – State Senator Andy Dinniman said
he is troubled by Gov. Corbett’s latest proposal to cut public-education
spending and will convene a public meeting on Thursday to discuss the proposed
cuts, their impact on local schools, and the future of public education in
Pennsylvania.
Thursday’s meeting will begin at 7
p.m. and be open to the public. It will be held in the auditorium of
Downingtown High School East at 50
Devon Drive , Exton.
PA
House Education Committee Changes, January 24, 2012
Rep. Duane Milne, Chester County , is resigning as a member of the
Education Committee and is elected as a member of the Commerce Committee.
Rep. Jim Christiana, Beaver County ,
is elected as a member of the Education Committee.
Rep. Steven Santarsiero is elected as a member of the
Education Committee.
Auditor
general seeks criminal probe of Pocono
Mountain Charter
School
Auditors flag $3 million in public education funds paid to a
church run by the school's founder.
By Steve Esack, Of The
Morning Call, 11:21 p.m. EST, February 8, 2012
Auditor General Jack
Wagner will ask the Monroe County District Attorney's Office to begin a
criminal probe of Pocono
Mountain Charter
School after auditors
flagged more than $3 million in public education money that had been paid to a
church run by the school's founder and CEO.
According to Wagner, the
financial transactions in question occurred when the Rev. Dennis Bloom, acting
in his dual role as head of the school and president of Shawnee Tabernacle
Church , signed lease
agreements that went up about 144 percent — to $964,996 — between 2006-07 and
2009-10 after taxpayers paid for $765,763 worth of building improvements that
benefited the church.
Corbett's
budget plan would give more money to schools, but most would go to pensions
Published: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 ,
2:34 By JAN MURPHY, The Patriot-News
Midstate school boards
worried about cutting programs, bigger class sizes and pay-to-play fees found
little relief in Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed 2012-13 budget. For homeowners, higher school property tax
rates are almost inevitable.
The governor has
proposed spending $10 billion on public schools. It’s an increase of about 3.4
percent, but that’s really not extra money for the classroom.
Most of the new funding
simply covers the mandated $316 million increase to cover the state’s
contribution to school employees’ pensions.
School districts would
lose about $100 million from the disappearance of grant funding they had
received to support programs aimed at raising student achievement, such as
tutoring, full-day kindergarten and class-size reductions.
Corbett
budget gets mixed local reaction from educators
The Pottstown Mercury By
Evan Brandt, ebrandt@pottsmerc.com Posted: 02/08/12 12:01 am
Local school officials
reacted with caution to Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed $27.1 billion budget
Tuesday while the head of Montgomery
County ’s fast-growing
community college system expressed “disappointment” at the proposed cuts there.
Budget: $30 million in cuts
to early childhood education programs; $95 million in cuts to public schools
thru elimination of ABG; Keystone Exams scaled back
Published: Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Delco Times By JOHN KOPP, jkopp@delcotimes.com, @DT_JohnKopp
Duquesne
schools run out of time, cash, ideas
The eleventh hour for the Duquesne City School District
is well under way. And as school board
member Burton Comensky says, "Twelfth-hour heroics are achieved only in
fiction."
On Tuesday night, the elected board
called a community meeting to decide what's best for the approximately 475
students in grades K-8 still attending school there. Try to get the state board
of control to give more money so the district can keep running in place? Send
students to West Mifflin schools? How about a
Propel charter school?
No one is sure about what to do.
What they are sure about is that what's happening now isn't acceptable:
children failing en masse.
Duquesne schools continue to be
among Pennsylvania 's
worst-rated districts in academic performance measurements. The state took over
the district in 2000, and the move hasn't helped. Scores on state tests in
reading and math remain in the basement, and the district's incident reports
place it among the most violent in the state. In short, nothing has changed.
Posted at 05:00 AM ET, 02/07/2012
Texas schools chief calls
testing obsession a ‘perversion’
The Republican education
commissioner of Texas, Robert Scott, might not be the first person you’d think
would find common ground with California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, but
Scott has savaged high-stakes testing in language that would make Brown smile.
Speaking to the Texas
State Board of Education late last month, Scott said that the mentality that
standardized testing is the “end-all, be-all” is a “perversion” of what a
quality education should be.
What’s more, he called
“the assessment and accountability regime” not only “a cottage industry but a
military-industrial complex.” And he attacked the Common Core Standards Initiative as
being motivated by business concerns.
Posted at 10:00 AM ET, 02/08/2012
Education Department’s
obsession with test scores deepens
Apparently it’s not
enough for the Obama administration that
standardized test scores are
now used to evaluate students, schools, teachers and principals. In a new
display of its obsession with test scores, the Education Department is
embarking on a study to determine which parts of clinical teacher training lead
to higher average test scores
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/education-departments-obsession-with-test-scores-deepens/2012/02/06/gIQAP7yuyQ_blog.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/education-departments-obsession-with-test-scores-deepens/2012/02/06/gIQAP7yuyQ_blog.html
Published Online: February 8, 2012
Students
Forgo Taking AP Exams
Education Week By Caralee J. Adams
Premium article access courtesy of
Edweek.org.
In all but four states, more public
school students in the class of 2011 took and passed at least one Advanced
Placement exam—18.1 percent on average—up from 16.9 percent for graduates the
year before, according to a report released Wednesday.
Yet the 8th annual "AP Report
to the Nation" shows that many students who had the academic potential to
succeed in AP didn’t take exams, either by choice or because they attended a
school that did not offer the subjects.
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