“Tuition free online
public schools” are not free.
They take
significantly more of your local tax dollars than it costs them to educate
their students, accumulating large balances of excess funds, spending your
local tax dollars on advertising and corporate bonuses while achieving
lackluster academic results. Only one of
12 Pennsylvania
Daily
postings from the Keystone State Education Coalition now reach more than 1650
Pennsylvania education policymakers – school directors, administrators,
legislators, legislative and congressional staffers, PTO/PTA officers, teacher
leaders, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 education advocacy
organizations via emails, website, Facebook and Twitter.
These daily
emails are archived at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
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on Twitter at @lfeinberg
“Gov. Corbett and Tomalis
need to leave Oz and accept the reality that there have been consequences to
their spending cuts.”
Posted: Tue,Sep. 25, 2012 ,
3:01 AM
Posted: Tue,
Inquirer Editorial: Cheating only part of problem
State education officials' reaction to the first
drop in test scores since Pennsylvania
Remember when the lovable charlatan who was
pretending to be a wizard begged Dorothy and her determined crew of misfits -
Toto, too - to pay no attention to him and instead focus their widening eyes on
the noisy machinery he was manipulating.
Likewise, state Education Secretary Ron Tomalis
wants the public to disregard the hundreds of millions of dollars in
public-school funding that the Corbett administration has cut and instead
attribute the lower scores to better policing of cheaters.
The state's tougher response to test cheating
deserves a loud and long round of applause. But that laudable effort must be
put in perspective. Tomalis says the state expects to eventually charge about
100 educators with cheating. Was catching those 100 out of Pennsylvania
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20120925_Inquirer_Editorial__Cheating_only_part_of_problem.html
CHARTER SCHOOL REFORM: SB1115
Governor’s proposed Charter School Entities Funding Advisory
Committee: We could save a lot of time and effort if we just let Mr. Gureghian
and K12’s CEO Ron Packard set the charter funding formula….
Here is the section of SB1115 (a special education bill that was
amended to include charter school reform provisions) as amended defining the
composition, powers and duties of the Governor’s proposed Charter School
Entities Funding Advisory Committee.
Take a good look at the composition of the committee. Of the 17
members, most are either political appointees or charter school representatives.
Only 3 represent the school districts and taxpayers responsible for paying the
bills.
CHARTER SCHOOL REFORM: SB1115
COMMENTARY: Shameless; just (expletive
deleted) shameless
On the last day of
June as PA House members worked feverishly to finish their business, Rep. Tom
Killion (R-168, Chester/Delaware counties) dropped a 54 page amendment into
SB1115 containing charter school reform provisions.
It included a clause
that would specifically exclude companies doing business with charter schools,
including management companies, from Pennsylvania
CHARTER SCHOOL REFORM: SB1115
Proposed statewide authorization and direct payment would further
diminish accountability and oversight for public tax dollars
$4 billion taxpayer dollars with no real oversight
KEYSEC Posting Updated
September 24,
2012
Charter schools -
public funding without public scrutiny
CHARTER SCHOOL REFORM: SB1115
Eliminate the pension double-dip reimbursement that PA taxpayers
pay to charter schools
Removing the "double dip" for pension
costs in the charter school reimbursement formula would create an estimated
savings of $510 million for PA school districts and taxpayers by 2016-17
Charter school
supporters gather at the Capitol to promote reform legislation
Published: Monday, September 24, 2012 ,
10:04
Several hundred charter school
students and their advocates came to Harrisburg on Monday to
give state lawmakers a homework assignment on their first day back from their
summer recess. They told them, in no uncertain terms, that it’s time to pass
the charter school reform legislation.
“The nonprofit’s $215,000
investment is significant - it represents the first time PSP, a relatively new
but increasingly powerful organization, is funding a Philadelphia School
District project. It has raised over $50 million in two years, but to date
given money to only charter and private schools in its quest to expand
high-quality educational choices for Philadelphia
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2012
Phila. school gets funding to plan for expansion, new MS
Inquirer Philly School Files Blog Posted
by Kristen Graham
Powel Elementary, a tiny public K-4 school in West Philadelphia , has long been regarded as an oasis in
the neighborhood - a safe, strong school where kids achieve. But parents
often worry - with a dearth of good post-Powel options, what happens after
children finish fourth grade?
They got a boost on Monday when the Philadelphia School Partnership awarded Powel a grant to plan to add a fifth grade, expand its enrollment, and plan for a brand-new middle school modeled after Science Leadership Academy, one of the city’s top schools.Drexel University will partner with Powel and SLA to help
plan the new school, which would likely be located on the same campus as Powel,
perhaps in the nearby former Drew
School
The goal is to serve an additional 500 students inWest
Philadelphia .
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/District-school-gets-funding-to-expand-open-middle-school.html
They got a boost on Monday when the Philadelphia School Partnership awarded Powel a grant to plan to add a fifth grade, expand its enrollment, and plan for a brand-new middle school modeled after Science Leadership Academy, one of the city’s top schools.
The goal is to serve an additional 500 students in
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/District-school-gets-funding-to-expand-open-middle-school.html
NSBA announces Thomas J. Gentzel as
new Executive Director
The National School Boards Association (NSBA) Board of Directors
unanimously selected Thomas J. Gentzel to be the next NSBA executive director
late last week. Gentzel is the executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA).
SAT
reading scores hit a four-decade low
Washington
Reading scores on the
SAT for the high school class of 2012 reached a four-decade low, putting a
punctuation mark on a gradual decline in the ability of college-bound teens to
read passages and answer questions about sentence structure, vocabulary and
meaning on the college entrance exam. Many
experts attribute the continued decline to record numbers of students taking
the test, including about one-quarter from low-income backgrounds. There are
many factors that can affect how well a student scores on the SAT, but few are
as strongly correlated as family income.
How to Fix the Schools
New York Times By JOE NOCERA Published: September 17, 2012
No matter how quickly
the Chicago
It’s not just the school
days that are being lost. Far more important, the animosity between the Chicago
Teachers Union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel
and his administration will undoubtedly linger long after the strike ends. The
battle will end, but the war between education reformers and urban public
schoolteachers will go on.
Teachers — many of them
— will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their
ability to teach. Their leaders — some of them — will denounce the “billionaire
hedge fund managers” who are financing many of the reform efforts. Reformers will
continue to view teachers’ unions as the greatest roadblock to higher student
achievement. How can such a poisonous atmosphere notaffect
what goes on in the classroom? Alienated labor is never a good thing. “It is
not possible to make progress with your students if you are at war with your
teachers,” says Marc Tucker.
Schooling Beyond Measure
Education Week Commentary By Alfie Kohn Published in Print: September 19, 2012 ,
alt="Article Tools" class=article-tools v:shapes="_x0000_i1025">
The reason that standardized-test results tend to be so uninformative
and misleading is closely related to the reason that these tests are so popular
in the first place. That, in turn, is connected to our attraction to—and the trouble
with—grades, rubrics, and various practices commended to us as "data
based." The
common denominator? Our culture's worshipful regard for numbers. Roger Jones, a
physicist, called it "the heart of our modern idolatry ... the belief that
the quantitative description of things is paramount and even complete in
itself."
Teachers’ Unions Court
New York Times By MOTOKO RICH
Published: September
24, 2012
The strike by public
school teachers in Chicago
Over the past few years,
lawmakers who have previously been considered solid supporters of teachers’
unions have tangled with them over a national education agenda that includes
new performance evaluations based partly on test scores, the overhaul of tenure
and the expansion of charter schools.
As these traditional
political alliances have shifted, teachers’ unions have pursued some strange
bedfellows among lawmakers who would not appear to be natural allies.
……While donations to
Democrats still far outweigh contributions to Republicans, the proportion of
union money going to Republican candidates this year, just over 8 percent, is
its highest since 2004, according to the institute. “The notion that just because you’re a
Democrat” you can take the teachers’ unions for granted “has changed,” said Jim
Reed, director of government relations for the Illinois Education Association.
The harm of local grading
in a world of standards: what NAEP reveals (Thoughtlessness part 4)
Granted, but… Blog Posted by Grant Wiggins Sep 22 2012
Once again the recently released NAEP results
reveal that American student achievement in writing is far worse than local
report cards would have us believe. If the new assessments for Common Core are
going to be as demanding as NAEP tests are – a likely bet – then we have a
disaster in the making: scores are going to be bad and there is going to be
hell to pay politically (since NAEP is not district-level reported and
typically flies below the layperson radar).
Just so we’re clear on the problem, let’s
compare 8th grade writing results on NAEP with results on a state writing test
(Pennsylvania
PSSA: PA test scores drop –
teacher beatings will continue
2012 PSSA commentary, links to data, press
release and reactions
Building One Pennsylvania 2012 Statewide Public Meeting
Promoting sustainable, inclusive
and economically prosperous communities
Saturday, October 13, 2012 10 am to 11:30 a.m. (doors
open at 9:30 for registration)
Declining
local tax bases, aging infrastructure, unfair state and federal policies are
undermining our communities. It's time to stand together to support our
diverse, middle class communities.
Join
local elected, faith and civic leaders from across Pennsylvania
·
Reduce our local
property tax burdens
·
Invest in our schools
·
Redevelop our
infrastructure while creating local jobs
·
Promote more balanced
housing markets
The
event is free but you must register in advance to reserve your seat. Register
at www.buildingonepa.org or by emailing name, title, organizational
affiliation, address, phone and email to info@buildingonepa.org. To defray the cost of the event, we are
accepting donations. Suggested donation: $5-$10.
Public Forum in Delaware
County
Thursday, Sept. 27th at 1pm Media Borough
Hall Community
Center ; 3rd &
Jackson , Media ,
PA
The SEPA Budget Coalition will join with
Family and Community Service of Delaware County and PathWays PA to host a forum
on the state and federal budgets. Experts from the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center
Click here to RSVP.
2012 PASA-PSBA
School
Registration is Now Open! Hershey Lodge & Convention Center, Hershey, PA
www.psba.org/workshops/school-leadership-conference/
Registration is Now Open! Hershey Lodge & Convention Center, Hershey, PA
www.psba.org/workshops/school-leadership-conference/
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