Send a Letter to the
President on October 17
Diane Ravitch’s Blog October 3, 2012 /
I got some excellent
suggestions.
To begin with, this is
not an online petition, but an invitation to join together to write your own
individual heartfelt letter to the President and to email the White House on
the same day.
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
Follow us
on Twitter at @lfeinberg
Commentary: PA charter school reform
should protect taxpayers, not just K12, Inc. CEO Ron Packard and CSM
CEO Vahan Gureghian
Commentary: Charter school lobby seeks to restrict democratic control of
schools
The notebook by Ron
Whitehorne on Oct 05 2012
Gov. Corbett's administration,
supported by the charter school lobby, is seeking to pass a change in the charter school law that would
effectively remove control of charter schools from local communities in favor
of a statewide commission of political appointees. The proposed law would also
ease requirements for prospective charter school operators, increase the term
for renewals from five to 10 years, and dramatically increase the ability of
local school boards to convert existing public schools to charters.
Under the revisions, any
district-run school, regardless of its performance, could be targeted for
conversion to a charter, and the requirement that some parental and community
support be demonstrated is dropped. The law would also exclude the records of
some charter school vendors from the “right to know” law.
The PA Legislature is in recess until October 15th
Please contact your state senator and state rep regarding charter school reform during this
break
You can bet that the charter school lobbyists are not taking a
break
Corbett's education chief changes PSSA testing rules for charter schools
without federal approval
Rules change appears to have inflated success
rate of some charter schools.
By Steve Esack and Eugene
Tauber, Of The Morning Call 4:13
p.m. October 5,
2012
A review of PSSA math and reading scores shows
charter schools outperformed traditional public schools in 2012. That's because state Education Secretary Ron
Tomalis, at the behest of charter school advocates, changed the testing rules
in a way that makes it easier for charter schools to meet state benchmarks.
But the change Tomalis quietly instituted was
done so without receiving the required approval from the federal Department of
Education.
“As a result, 44 of the 77 charter schools that
PDE has recently classified as having made AYP for 2011-12 in fact fell short
of the targets for academic performance that other public schools had to meet,
some even declining in proficiency percentages rather than making gains.”
PDE using unapproved formula to artificially inflate charter
school AYP numbers
PSBA 10/5/2012
The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE)
has implemented a new way of determining whether charter schools have met
student achievement milestones for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the
federal No Child Left Behind law.
The new method is less stringent than the
standards that must be met by traditional public schools, and which until this
year were also applied to charter schools. As a result, 44 of the 77 charter
schools that PDE has recently classified as having made AYP for 2011-12 in fact
fell short of the targets for academic performance that other public schools
had to meet, some even declining in proficiency percentages rather than making
gains.
My spies tell me that guests for this discussion
may include MatthewJ.
Brouillette, President and CEO of the Commonwealth
Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives and Helen Gym, former Notebook
editor and a co-founder of Parents United for Public Education
WHYY Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane
Radio Times discusses
parent trigger Monday October 8th at 10 am
Are you familiar with the 'parent trigger' laws?
And how do you feel about parents taking schools into their own hands to ensure
the outcome of the children's education and safety? Some states have enacted
such laws, and there's a bill in the Pa legislature to move this along in the
commonwealth. Join us Monday morning at 10 to hear a debate on the
controversial issue.
You can listen live on Monday at this link: http://www.whyy.org/91FM/live.php
Want to call in during the show?
Won’t
Be Silent
Yinzercation Blog — OCTOBER 5, 2012
The new film, “Won’t
Back Down,” is a thinly-veiled propaganda piece produced by ultra-right
ideologues bent on privatizing one of our most cherished public goods. It’s a
blatant attempt to inject “parent trigger laws” into the national conversation
on education, laws pretending to give parents and teachers control over
struggling schools that in reality strip away local control and hand schools
over to private corporations. But you wouldn’t have known any of that from the
panel discussion after a private screening of the movie held Wednesday night.
Hosted by A+Schools
along with the Pittsburgh
Public School
district Hollywood stars and a
tear-jerking soundtrack, Testa was also infuriatingly given the majority of
microphone time.
It is what it is. But
what if it’s WRONG?
At the chalk face blog October 4, 2012 by Tim Slekar
Last night I attended my
local school board meeting to use my three minutes of public comment time to
address the board. I was there to continue my comments from last school
year on teacher evaluations and why the board should at least think about the
consequences when our teachers and principals will be forced to have 50% of
their evaluation determined by the invalid high stakes test scores of the
children taking these invalid measurements.
Posted: Fri, Oct. 5, 2012 , 3:01 AM
Esperanza gets $2M grant to form middle school
By Aubrey Whelan Inquirer
Staff Writer
A North
Philadelphia charter high school is set to add a 635-pupil middle
school to its burgeoning population by next year, thanks to a $2 million grant
from the Philadelphia School Partnership.
….The high school's grant comes
less than a month after another expansion grant PSP awarded to Powel
Elementary, a K-4 public school in West Philadelphia .
That $215,000 grant, which will allow the school to add a fifth grade and 500
more students, marked the first time PSP had funded a Philadelphia
Private Dollars for Longer School Days
Schools in North Carolina
According to the article, the North
Carolina legislature authorized nine schools in the Charlotte
In response, a coalition of foundations, local
businesses, and other donors has pooled resources—amounting to $55 million—that
they want to use to lengthen the calendar at the local high school and the
eight schools that feed into it in an initiative called Project LIFT:
Leadership and Investment For Transformation
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.
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/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.