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MEDIA ADVISORY
House Democratic Policy Committee to hold
public hearing
on impact of education funding cuts
Wednesday July 13 in Abington
ABINGTON,
July 13 – The House Democratic Policy
Committee will hold a public hearing to explore the impact of funding cuts on Pennsylvania ’s schools and the potential consequences of
the recurring cuts in the 2012-13 state budget from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at Penn State
Abington, Sutherland
Building 1600 Woodland Road
State Rep.
Madeleine Dean, D-Montgomery, requested the hearing and will serve as its
co-chairman. State Rep. James Roebuck, D-Phila., Democratic chairman of the
House Education Committee, plans to attend.
The hearing
will focus on the effect state funding cuts have had on schools and students as
well as how local districts are operating with a continued decline in state
aid. The recently approved state budget did not include additional reductions
in state funding, but it did maintain the billion dollars cut from the 2011-12
state budget.
The current
hearing agenda is:
· 10 a.m. – Welcome and opening remarks
· 10:10 a.m. – Panel one:
Ø Dr.
Leigh Altadonna, assistant superintendent, Abington School District
Ø Dr.
Michael Pladus, superintendent, Upper
Dublin School
District
Ø Susan
Arnhold, school director, Abington
School District
Ø Mark
Miller, school director, Centennial
School District
Ø David
Robinson, school director, Upper
Dublin School
District
· 11:10 a.m. – Panel two:
Ø Baruch
Kintisch, director of Policy Advocacy, Education Law
Center
Ø Vanessa
Good, secretary, Upper Dublin Education Foundation
Ø Judith
Evans, head of Career Education, The Pathway School
Ø Kathleen
Joyce, parent of child with Individualized Education Programs (IEP)
Ø Michael
Evans, graduate of Abington
High School
· 12:10 p.m. – Closing remarks
The
hearing is open to the public and media coverage is invited.
Proponents
Hail Expanded Education Tax Credit Opponents Call ‘Voucher Light’
KYW Newsradio CBS Philadelphia July
17, 2012 6:32 AM
Invitation to
a Dialogue: An Excess of Testing
New York Times Published: July 17, 2012
Letter to the Editor by Stephen Krashen
The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California Rossier School
The common core standards movement seems to be
common sense: Our schools should have similar standards, what students should
know at each grade. The movement, however, is based on the false assumption
that our schools are broken, that ineffective teaching is the problem and that
rigorous standards and tests are necessary to improve things.
The mediocre performance of American students on
international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But
students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the
best in the world on these tests, which means that teaching is not the problem.
The problem is poverty. Our overall scores are unspectacular because so many
American children live in poverty (23 percent, ranking us 34th out of 35
“economically advanced countries”).
Poverty means inadequate nutrition and health care,
and little access to books, all associated with lower school achievement.
Addressing those needs will increase achievement and better the lives of
millions of children.
How can we pay for this? Reduce testing. The common
core, adopted by 45 states, demands an astonishing increase in testing, far
more than needed and far more than the already excessive amount required by No
Child Left Behind.
Yong
Zhao (from Ed Week posting below): “The United States has to stop pushing standards
and standardization and high-stakes testing—even if all students scored above
average on the new tests based on the common core or surpassed other countries
on the Program for International Student Assessment, our children would not be
ready for the future. America
Posted: Tue, Jul. 17, 2012 , 3:00 AM
The story of West Philly
High School
Philadelphia Daily News by Ronnie Polaneczky, Daily
News Columnist
I'M A SUCKER for a love story. I just never thought I'd see one on "Frontline."
I'M A SUCKER for a love story. I just never thought I'd see one on "Frontline."
The weekly PBS documentary showcase rivals only
"60 Minutes" in its Very Important Coverage of news and public
affairs. The last thing you'd expect while watching "Frontline" is to
reach for a Kleenex while pressing your hand to your heart and sniffling,
"I LOVE these guys…"
But if you watch Tuesday night's
"Frontline" premiere of "Fast Times at West Philly High," I
promise that you, too, will be tearful and smitten.
And you will ask, "Shouldn't more teachers be
doing what these people are doing?"
The gripping, 36-minute documentary by Swarthmore
filmmaker Debra Morton chronicles the three-year quest of students at West Philly
High School
Zhou on Entrepreneurship, the Common Core, and
Bacon
I recently read Yong Zhao's World Class
Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students (Corwin, 2012). The book is an
intriguing one, and once I began reading I found it difficult to put down.
In his book, Mr. Zhao argues that the elements
of the American education system that foster creativity and entrepreneurship in
its students and are most envied by China
(including by the renowned education system of Shanghai ,
with its test-taking dominance) are in danger of being destroyed altogether by
current U.S. China America ,
on the other hand, doesn't make sausage as well as China
Good News
from New Jersey
Diane Ravitch’s Blog July 17, 2012 //
Jersey Jazzman reports that New
Jersey will not approve the state’s first online for-profit virtual charter
school. K12 has been told to come back next year, perhaps on the hope that
citizen outrage will have died down by then. Jersey Jazzman, you may
recall, memorably
referred to New Jersey as “the cesspool of school reform.”
This is two wins in a row against the K12
giant, first
in North Carolina, where the school boards banded together to stop the
raid on their own strained budgets, and now in New Jersey, where concerned
parents and educators blew the whistle.
It’s important to remind everyone that the reformers
are vulnerable. They are vulnerable to public exposure because the fact is that
their harmful ideas have no public support once the public understands what
they are up to. There is no public support for handing taxpayer dollars over to
corporate interests and calling it “reform.”
Does 5 weeks of training
make a teacher ‘highly qualified?’ U.S.
Should someone with five weeks of teacher
training be considered a highly qualified teacher?
Today a U.S. House appropriations subcommittee
will consider legislation that would allow students still learning to be
teachers to be considered highly qualified teachers under federal law.
A Teach for America WASHINGTON
Education Week Politics K-12 Blog By Alyson Klein on July
17, 2012 12:14 PM
The Obama administration's signature K-12
initiative—the Race to the Top competition—would get axed under a proposal put
forward by Republicans on the House panel that oversees K-12 spending.
Two other major Obama priorities—the School
Improvement Grant program, which provides $533 million to help turn around
low-performing schools, and the nearly $150 million Investing in Innovation
grant program—would also be eliminated, according to a press release put out by
U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Appropriations
Committee.
A Fresh
Look at What School Menus Can Be
New York Times By DAN FROSCH Published: July 17, 2012
With new federal standards for school meals going into effect this
month, and a renewed focus on the issue brought by the first lady, Michelle
Obama, thousands of school chefs, food service workers and nutrition experts
from around the country gathered in Denver this week at an annual conference
put on by the School
Nutrition Association, a
nonprofit organization of school food professionals.
Disruptions:
Next Step for Technology Is Becoming the Background
New York
Times Bits Blog By NICK BILTON
Google’s glasses, in a version for
developers, cost $1,500.
I have seen the future, and it is wearable.
But before I tell you about this future, let’s
take a short trip into the past, specifically to the mid-1400s, when a German
by the name of Johannes
Gutenberg was hard at work inventing the printing press.
There’s a common misconception that Gutenberg’s press instantly changed
society. This isn’t quite so.
NSBA
Federal Relations Network seeking new members for 2013-14
School directors are invited to
advocate for public education at the federal level through the National School
Boards Association’s Federal Relations Network. The National School Boards Association is
seeking school directors interested in serving on the Federal Relations Network
(FRN), its grass roots advocacy program that brings local board members on the
front line of pending issues before Congress. If you are a school director and
willing to carry the public education message to Washington , D.C.
Click here for more information.
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