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Eliminate
the pension double-dip reimbursement that taxpayers pay to charter schools
PA
Charter funding formula is great for CEO whose cyber never made AYP
State House approves $27.66 billion budget
Facing Saturday deadline, lawmakers
still trying to reach agreement on connected issues.
By John L. Micek, Call Harrisburg Bureau 10:05 p.m. EDT, June
28, 2012
HARRISBURG— A $27.66 billion, no-tax increase state
budget that provides state colleges, libraries and public schools with the same
amount of money they received this year but ends a cash assistance program for
the neediest Pennsylvanians is on its way to the state Senate.
With just two days to go before the Saturday
deadline to approve a spending plan for the fiscal year that starts Sunday, the
House voted 120-81 on Thursday evening to approve the budget, which represents
an increase of $370 million over current spending and $500 million more than
Gov. Tom Corbett sought when he presented his first
spending proposal to lawmakers in February.
A vote by the Senate is expected as soon as Friday.
Pennsylvania House
approves $27.7 billion state spending bill
Published: Thursday, June 28, 2012, 5:57 PM
The state Senate is poised to vote today on the
nearly $27.7
billion spending plan that the House approved 120-81 on Thursday. It would increase spending by less than 2
percent, or $471 million, over this year’s budget. And it doesn’t require a tax
increase to support it.
Posted: Fri, Jun. 29, 2012, 3:01 AM
Pa. House OKs bill
to assess teachers based on student achievement
By Dan Hardy Inquirer Staff Writer
Pennsylvania appears to be
headed toward a teacher evaluation system that for the first time would be
based in part on student test scores.
Legislation sponsored by Rep. Ryan Aument (R.,
Lancaster) and approved by the state House on Thursday would count student
performance on a wide variety of measures for 50 percent of teacher and
principal ratings. The measures include everything from graduation rate and
attendance to state and local test scores.The remainder of a teacher's
evaluation would be based on classroom observation, the traditional way. That,
too, is undergoing an overhaul. A pilot program aimed at making observations
more accurate and useful ended its second year this month; Phase Three is
scheduled for this fall.
Controversy Over School Voucher Program in Philadelphia
Was Rep. Jim Christiana influenced by pro-voucher donations
when advocating bill that would cost Philadelphia
public schools $75 million?
Education News Blog by S.D. Lawrence June 27m 2012
The Philadelphia Archdiocese and
new Fighting Chance PA PAC, which shares a name with spring’s grassroots
campaign launched by the Pennsylvania Catholic Coalition, are both pressing
for legislation in Harrisburg which would save many struggling
Catholic schools by pumping millions of dollars of scholarship money into them.
Fighting Chance PA PAC has already
given out nearly a quarter million dollars to pro-voucher state lawmakers and
other political committees in Harrisburg,
including $25,000 to Rep. Jim Christiana who a month later introduced a $75
million bill to support scholarships for Catholic schools. Philly.com writer Will Bunch says the focused
lobbying is a sign that new Archbishop Charles Caput is proving to be one of
the most politically savvy Catholic leaders. Chaput wrote an Inquirer op-ed in
support of Christiana’s bill shortly after it was introduced; titled ‘Pass
voucher bill now – or else’
Posted: Fri, Jun. 29, 2012, 3:01 AM
Chester Upland
school board passes bare-bones budget
By Dan Hardy Inquirer Staff
Writer
Aided by an infusion of $10.7
million in state money that was agreed to this week as part of the state budget
deal in Harrisburg, the Chester Upland
School District board
passed a bare-bones $101 million budget Thursday night. The board passed the budget before an
audience of about 50 people.
….The budget passed Thursday
leaves things in the classrooms in the Delaware County
district much as they were this school year, except that full-day
prekindergarten and full-day kindergarten are being added.
Persing said that the district
also would beef up its special-education program, but he had no details.
Negotiations with state officials over how to achieve that are also continuing,
he said.
The grade configuration of the
schools will be changed, but all will remain open, he said. Some security
positions have been cut.
The district will continue to have no art or music programs
except at one elementary school, and no Advanced Placement or honors classes, Persing
said.
Posted at 12:58 AM ET, 06/29/2012
How GERM is infecting
schools around the world
This was
written by Pasi Sahlberg, author of “ Finnish
Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland? and director general of Finland’s
Center for International Mobility and Cooperation. He has served the Finnish
government in various positions, worked for the World Bank in Washington
D.C. and for the European Training Foundation
in Italy
as senior education specialist. Sahlberg has also advised governments
internationally about education policies and reforms. He is also an adjunct
professor of education at the University
of Helsinki and University of Oulu.
He can be reached at pasi.sahlberg@cimo.fi.
By Pasi Sahlberg
Ten years ago — against all odds — Finland was
ranked as the world’s top education nation. It was strange because in Finland education is seen as a public good
accessible to all free of charge without standardized testing or competitive
private schools. When I look around the world, I see competition, choice, and
measuring of students and teachers as the main means to improve education. This
market-based global movement has put many public schools at risk in the United States
and many other countries, as well. But not in Finland.
On his
website, Vollmer offers a Los Angeles Times quote from a Professor Theodore M.
Greene of Princeton University: “I know of no college or university in the
country that doesn’t have to offer most or all of its freshmen courses in
remedial English, beginning mathematics, beginning science and beginning
foreign languages. Consequently, we give two or three years of college
[courses] and the rest is high school work.”
Before you start nodding your head, you should
know that Greene made his statement in March 1946. Complaining
about the caliber of students is one of our national pastimes, but as our
population ages fewer Americans have any direct involvement with schools.
Schools
Advocate Takes Aim at 'Nostesia'
Public schools supporter says
educators need to do a better job of making their case to an aging taxpaying
public. It was early in Jamie
Vollmer’s transformationfrom education critic to public schools advocate
that a superintendent invited him to spend a day in her district.
She had Vollmer, then a business
executive, do bus duty and work as an aide to a third-grade teacher in the
morning. After a 20-minute lunch break, the superintendent took off the kid
gloves.
“She put me in an eighth-grade
classroom on a warm afternoon,” Vollmer recalls. “I’ve since referred to that
as the nuclear option.”
Capitol
Ideas Blog by John Micek June 28,2012
Thursday
Morning Coffee: Three days and counting.
Good
Thursday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
The state House convenes at 9:30 a.m. this morning to finally begin
consideration ofthe 2012-13 state budget.
The chamber broke for the night last night without beginning an expected
debate on the $27,66 billion spending plan for the new fiscal year that begins
Sunday. Legislative leaders and the Corbett administration spent much of the
night engaged in shuttle diplomacy trying to lock down the key parts of the
spending plan that remain unresolved.
…..SCHOOL REFORM: The debate over charter school reform remained very
much in flux last night. The long-standing idea of creating a statewide
authorizing panel that would approve all or some new charter applications
appears to be a non-starter. Instead,
budget negotiators are weighing a proposal that would vest new powers in the
Pennsylvania Charter School Appeals Board. While the panel would not be
authorized to approve charter applications, it would have more power on the
back end.
The House advanced new teacher evaluation legislation, sponsored by Rep.
Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster, positioning it for a vote Thursday or Friday. The
proposal would allow local districts to adopt their own evaluation tests from a
menu of predetermined benchmarks with the approval of the state Department of
Education.
Efforts to expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit and what's
become known as EITC 2.0 appear to be locked down. The former would be
increased by $25 million from $75 million now to $100 million next year, while
EITC 2.0, advanced by Rep. Jim Christiana, R-Beaver, would receive $50 million
to pay for scholarships for kids in the poorest and worst-performing districts.
Posted: Thu, Jun. 28, 2012, 3:00 AM
Pa. taxpayers underwrite Sandusky
charity
Philadelphia Daily News
By Will Bunch Daily News Staff Writer
PENNSYLVANIA TAXPAYERS have underwritten nearly $1.4 million in contributions
to the Second Mile, the disgraced charity founded by convicted pedophile Jerry
Sandusky where testimony showed he groomed some of the boys he later molested.
The taxpayer-subsidized donations
— which support the Second Mile's summer camp and an annual Leadership
Institute — come through a controversial scholarship program called the
Educational Improvement Tax Credit, or EITC, that may be dramatically expanded
as lawmakers in Harrisburg
look to pass a new state budget this weekend.
Critics of EITC — currently a $75
million program that mainly underwrites scholarships for kids to attend
religious and private schools — say that the Second Mile is a glaring example
of a shocking lack of oversight of what the Pennsylvania tax subsidies actually
pay for.
"There really is very minimal
accountability," said Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center,
a progressive policy think tank. Last year, his center issued a report called
"No
Accountability" that said that state officials lack basic information
on whether EITC scholarships actually improve student performance, even as they
mandate extensive testing and evaluation in public schools.
Despite that study and a
recent New York Times report tracking political influence in the
tax-credit program, lawmakers in Harrisburg — aided by lobbying from the
Philadelphia Archdiocese and big-bucks proponents of vouchers — are debating
several proposals that would increase EITC funding from the current $75 million
to somewhere between $100 million and $200 million.
Legislation to help Pennsylvania's fiscally distressed school districts gets
no love from Harrisburg and York House members
Published:
Thursday, June
28, 2012, 11:55 AM
By JAN MURPHY,
The Patriot-News
The plan to rescue the state's
fiscally distressed school districts that is taking shape in the Legislature is
concerning to House members representing York and Harrisburg school districts,
which would be among those in the plan's immediate crosshairs.
Caught in a hallway, Reps. Ron
Buxton, D-Harrisburg, and Eugene DePasquale, D-York, bashed theSenate-passed
plan that Senate
Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin County,
crafted.
It would provide financially
struggling school districts with extra funding, but also establishes a process
that could lead to the state takeover of them.
Parkland Calls for Changes to 'No Child Left
Behind'
South Whitehall Patch By Mary
Youtz June 27, 2012
Parkland School Board
passes a resolution that says No Child Left Behind shouldn't just rely on
standardized test scores as a measure of schools' effectiveness.
The Parkland School
Board approved a resolution Tuesday, calling on Congress to replace the school
accountability system in the No Child Left Behind Act with one that doesn’t
just rely on standardized test scores.
School boards
throughout the state are considering the resolution, provided by the
Pennsylvania School Boards Association
Is your State Rep. on the cosponsor list for HB
2364? If not, why not?
If they tell you that we should make it easier
to authorize charters or that they are already accountable enough have them
read this:
More details on HB
2364 from PSBA:
Education Voters PA @EdVotersPA
Please take 2 minutes to send an email to
your state reps; ask them to restore public ed funding:
STATEWIDE PRESS COVERAGE OF SCHOOL DISTRICT
BUDGETS
Here are more than 800 articles since
January 23rd detailing budget cuts, program cuts, staffing cuts and
tax increases being discussed by local school districts
The PA House Democratic Caucus has been tracking daily press coverage on
school district budgets statewide:
Candidates for 2013 PSBA officers
At its May 19 meeting
at PSBA Conference Center,
the PSBA Nominating Committee interviewed and selected a slate of candidates
for officers of the association in 2013.
Absentee ballot procedures for election of PSBA officers
PSBA website 6/1/2012
All school directors
and school board secretaries who are eligible to vote and who do not plan to
attend the association's annual business meeting during the 2012 PASA-PSBA
School Leadership Conference in Hershey, Oct. 16-19, may request an absentee
ballot for election purposes.
The absentee ballot
must be requested from the PSBA executive director in accordance with the PSBA
Bylaws provisions (see PSBA Bylaws, Article IV, Section 4, J-Q.). Specify the
name and mailing address of each individual for whom a ballot is requested.
Requests must be in
writing, e-mailed or mailed first class and postmarked or marked received at
PSBA Headquarters no later than Aug. 15. Mail to Executive Director, P.O. Box 2042, Mechanicsburg,
PA 17055
or e-mail administrativerequests@psba.org.