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These daily
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For January 31, 2013
Thanks Dan!
Long time Inquirer reporter Dan Hardy announced his retirement yesterday
in an email. He covered statewide
education issues for many years and will be sorely missed. Here is a quote from his email:
“I’ve been in it for one reason
all along: because I fervently believe that bringing to light information
that is often obscured by bureaucratic jargon or buried in plain sight by those
who spin the facts to serve their purposes would actually make a difference in
the lives of our readers. I hope that at least sometimes, it did.”
BTW Dan, it did.
School Choice Week 2013: How
taxpayers lose.... A collection of articles following money, politics and
academic performance
Evan Brandt Digital Notebook
Blog WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2013
So apparently all hope for
sanity in Pennsylvania
It was announced in Tuesday's papers that Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis Monday rejected all eight applications for new cyber-charter schools.
It was announced in Tuesday's papers that Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis Monday rejected all eight applications for new cyber-charter schools.
Governor Corbett Announces Liquor
Privatization Plan Highlighting Consumer Choice and Convenience; $1 Billion
Proceeds to Education
Press
Release (Thanks
John Micek!)
Corbett injects school aid into debate over
state stores
How to raise $1 billion Governor's plan for
privatization gets mixed reviews, dismissed by union
By
James O'Toole, Karen Langley and Tim McNulty / Pittsburgh
Pursuing
a goal that has eluded Republican governors for decades, Gov. Tom Corbett
outlined a sweeping proposal Wednesday to privatize liquor sales and expand
beer and wine outlets in the state while using the proceeds to fund $1 billion
in school block grants.
Corbett: $1 billion to schools from sale of
state stores
Angela
Couloumbis and Rita Giordano, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
POSTED: Wednesday,
January 30, 2013 ,
2:52 PM
"I don't believe future
education funding should only be predicated on whether we do this," said
Scarnati
Senate GOP
leader Scarnati says liquor linkage to schools not a problem for him
By Charles Thompson |
cthompson@pennlive.com
onJanuary 30,
2013 at 4:30 PM ,
updated January 30, 2013 at 5:15
PM
on
One day after warning Gov. Tom Corbett against
taking policy "hostages" by linking budget
issues, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, said the
governor's new bid to augment school funding with
proceeds from liquor store sales doesn't break his rules.
Mandate relief, he said, could
be the keystone of the administration’s new education emphasis.
State education secretary says Corbett’s
budget has good news for schools
Philly
Burbs Intelligencer By Mark Shade Staff Writer Posted on January 30, 2013
LANDISVILLE — With state
revenues exceeding expectations, Pennsylvania Hempfield
School District in Lancaster County
Tomalis wouldn’t say how much
of an increase Corbett will propose during his address to the General Assembly
Tuesday. Corbett allocated $11.4 billion for early, basic and higher education
for the current budget year. “This is a
transformative time in education and we do need to invest in our students in a
way that’s a little bit different,” Tomalis said.
Some of that investment will
come in the form of local relief from some mandates; increased emphasis on
science, technology, engineering and math; and investments in a new educator
evaluation system.
City Controller Butkovitz said
Wednesday: "There's a lot of unfinished business on charter
accountability."
Former official of Philly charter school
network reportedly will plead guilty
Martha
Woodall, Inquirer Staff Writer
POSTED: Thursday,
January 31, 2013 ,
3:01 AM
The former business manager of
Dorothy June Brown's charter school network has signaled that he intends to
change his plea and admit that he played a role in Brown's alleged scheme to
defraud the schools of $6.7 million.
One in Six
Philadelphia Public Schools Is Targeted For Closure
The Nation by Allison Kilkenny on
January 28, 2013
- 9:29 AM ET
During one of many
anti-austerity protests last summer, more
than 1,000 people rallied to oppose the Philadelphia District’s plans
to “transform schools,” a pleasant euphemism generally meaning school closures
and mass layoffs. The Philly district planned to lay off 2,700 blue-collar
workers, including every member of the SEIU 32BJ Local 1201, the city school
union representing bus assistants, cleaners, mechanics, and other workers.
In late July, the School Reform
Commission scrapped those plans and approved
a contract that avoided layoffs, but led to worker salary reductions
(employees had between $5 and $45 deducted each week from their pay).
Additionally, the union nixed two planned wage increases—a 3 percent jump set
for earlier in the year and another raise that would have kicked in the first
of this year. Despite the union’s
concession, the district still has a $282 million deficit, and the Philadelphia
School District’s plan to save money is closing one in six public schools in
the area, a move that activists,
clergy and some officials saywill disproportionately affect students of
colors, as well as poor and disabled students.
Bucks County Courier January
30, 2013 2:50 pm
“The additional funding will be
used for enrollment services and also to provide health care coverage to an
additional 9,300 new enrollees expected through the additional outreach,” said
Insurance Commissioner Michael Consedine, who made the announcement in front of
“Icky the Infectious Clown” at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg.
How Low Can He Go?
Just how low will our Governor
go? Gov. Corbett’s approval ratings are in the tank, the lowest they’ve ever
been. And he seems to be trying very hard not to talk about cuts to the state’s
education budget, which he will formally propose next week. Yet he appears
prepared to hold students hostage in negotiations over the looming pension
crisis.
Education Week Digital
Education Blog By Sean Cavanagh on January
28, 2013 9:16 AM
“If you learn how to read, you
can learn all your life,” the former English teacher told the children. “If you
know how to read, you can learn to do anything. It’s just a lot of fun.”
By Joseph Kress, The Sentinel January 29, 2013
First Lady Susan Corbett, wife
of Pennslvania Governor Tom Corbett, reads a book to a group of students from North Dickinson
Elementary School North Dickinson
Elementary School
Getting some Z’s was just the
response Susan Corbett was hoping for from her audience of kindergartners and
first-graders.
The First Lady of Pennsylvania
was a guest reader lending her support to the 2013 Buck a Book Literacy
Campaign to raise funds and awareness for programs benefiting adult learners in
Cumberland County
“The task force will be made up
of roughly 25 public officials and violent crime experts. The panel's findings
will be due by the end of the year.”
Task force to study violence in schools
OK'd by Pa.
WHYY Newsworks By Mary
Wilson January
30, 2013
The call for additional
security in schools in Pennsylvania
The state Senate has approved
creating a task force to study how to prevent mass shootings at schools in the
wake of the elementary school shooting in Connecticut
“There is currently an
assumption within the charter sector that even if "the first few years are
rocky" at a school, charters can eventually rise to higher performance
over time, the authors say. But the study casts doubt on that assumption.”
Charters' Path to Success or Failure Set
Early, new CREDO Study Finds
Education Week Charters and
Choice Blog By Sean Cavanagh on January
30, 2013
Charter schools' academic
success or failure during their first year is a strong predictor of whether
they will excel or struggle in later years, a new, far-reaching study finds.
The study,
released Wednesday by Stanford
University
The analysis seeks to test a
number of the most pressing questions about charter schools. Those include the
extent to which they can improve over time, or whether the academic strategies
and other policies they put in place out of the gate determine their success as
they reach maturity; as well as whether charters can expand beyond their
original, flagship schools to form networks of successful charters.
In the past four years the Walton Family
Foundation has invested well over half a
billion dollars to dismantle democratically run American public schools.
Are you still shopping at Walmart?
Click on the following links for
detailed lists of recipients and amounts for each year:
2009 $ 134,119,354
2012 $ 158,142,809 (Just released)
Total: $ 608,532,310
FEE is one small example of the
Walton’s funding: 2009 $600,000; 2010 $1,692,000; 2011 $1,550,000; 2012
$1,000,000
E-mails link Bush foundation, corporations
and education officials
A nonprofit group released thousands of
e-mails today and said they show how a foundation begun by Jeb Bush,
the former Florida governor and national education reform leader, is working
with public officials in states to write education laws that could benefit some
of its corporate funders. A call to the
foundation has not been returned.
The e-mails are between the
Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current
and former state education commissioners who support Bush’s agenda of school
reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of
third-graders who can’t read and school accountability systems based on
standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test
scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores. John White of Louisiana is a current member, as is Tony Bennett, the
new commissioner of Florida who got the job
after Indiana
The Sunk-Cost Effect on Standardized
Testing
Education Week Reality Check
Blog By Walt Gardner on January
30, 2013 7:27 AM
I know why you're reading
today's column: What in the world is the sunk-cost effect and what does it have
to do with standardized testing? The sunk-cost effect is a classic economic
dilemma ("That Sunk-Cost Feeling," The
New Yorker, Jan. 21). In short, it means that once lots of money and energy
have been expended, the costs are simply too great to ignore. "This means
that we often end up sticking with something when we'd be better off cutting
our losses." In fact, it frequently follows that we invest even more money
and energy because we can't bring ourselves to acknowledge we were wrong. It's
throwing good money after bad on a grand scale.
Standardized testing, in my
view, is a perfect example. The cost of tests, testing services and test-prep
materials is estimated to be more than $2.3 billion a year and rapidly growing,
according to Eduventures Inc. But we refuse to admit that the evidence does not
support our fanatical commitment to these tests ("Problems With The Use of Student Test Scores To Evaluate Teachers,"
Economic Policy Institute, Aug. 2010). Instead, we blindly continue to spend
more money on them in the delusion that by doing so our original decision will
somehow be vindicated.
It won't.
Deep spending cuts are likely, lawmakers
say, with no deal on sequester in sight
Less than a month after averting
one fiscal crisis, Washington began bracing Tuesday for another, as
lawmakers in both parties predicted that deep, across-the-board
spending cuts would probably hit the Pentagon and other federal
agencies on March 1.
An array of proposals are in
the works to delay or replace the cuts. But party leaders say they see no clear
path to compromise, particularly given a growing sentiment among Republicans to
pocket the cuts and move on to larger battles over health and retirement
spending.
“For the first time ever, there
are more varsity robotics teams than there are boys' varsity hockey teams in
the state.”
Robotics
on a roll in Minnesota
Varsity teams outnumber boys' hockey as students' interest in the
robot-building sport soars across Minnesota
An explosion in the popularity
of high school robotics teams has suddenly made it chic to be geek. Robotics team members are getting varsity
letters and patches, being paraded before school assemblies like other sports
stars and seeing trophies in the same lobby display cases as their football,
basketball or baseball counterparts.
"It's the new kid on the
block," said Dawn Nichols, head of school at Convent of the Visitation
Catholic School in Mendota Heights, which has the only all-girls robotics team
in the state.
A telling statistic: For the
first time ever, there are more varsity robotics teams than there are boys'
varsity hockey teams in the state. There are 156 high school boys' hockey teams
and 180 robotics teams, up from 153 last year, according to the Minnesota State
High School League.
Yinzercation Blog January 28, 2013
Come RALLY FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION on Sunday,
February 10, 2013 . 3PM at
the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in East
Liberty (5941 Penn
Avenue , Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania 15206
SAVE THE DATE: 2013 Pennsylvania
Budget Summit
Many Pennsylvanians have
sent a clear message to Harrisburg Policy Center
for an in-depth look at the Governor's proposal and an update on the federal
budget -- and what they mean for communities and families across Pennsylvania
2013 Pennsylvania
Budget Summit
Thursday, February 21, 2013 ,
9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
HiltonHarrisburg , 1 North Second Street, Harrisburg , PA
Hilton
EPLC 2013 REGIONAL WORKSHOPS
FOR SCHOOL
The Education Policy and Leadership Center, with the Cooperation
of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) and Pennsylvania
Association of School Business Officials (PASBO), will conduct A Series of Regional Full-Day
Workshops for 2013
Pennsylvania School Board Candidates. Registration is $45 and includes
coffee/donuts, lunch, and materials.
Philadelphia Region Saturday, February 2, 2013
– 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, 1605 W. Main Street, Norristown, PA 19403
Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, 1605 W. Main Street, Norristown, PA 19403
Harrisburg Region Saturday, February 9,
2013– 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Pennsylvania School Boards Association Headquarters, 400 Bent Creek Boulevard, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Pennsylvania School Boards Association Headquarters, 400 Bent Creek Boulevard, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Pittsburgh Region Saturday, February 23, 2013 – 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Doubletree Hotel Pittsburgh/Monroeville, 101 Mall Blvd., Monroeville, PA 15146
Doubletree Hotel Pittsburgh/Monroeville, 101 Mall Blvd., Monroeville, PA 15146
2013 PSBA Leadership Symposium on
Advocacy and Issues
April 6, 2013 The Penn Stater Convention Center Hotel; State College, PA
Strategic leadership, school budgeting and advocacy are key issues facing today's school district leaders. For your school district to truly thrive, leaders must maintain a solid understanding of these three functions. Attend the 2013 PSBA Leadership Symposium on Advocacy and Issues to ensure you have the skills you need to take your district to the next level.
April 6, 2013 The Penn Stater Convention Center Hotel; State College, PA
Strategic leadership, school budgeting and advocacy are key issues facing today's school district leaders. For your school district to truly thrive, leaders must maintain a solid understanding of these three functions. Attend the 2013 PSBA Leadership Symposium on Advocacy and Issues to ensure you have the skills you need to take your district to the next level.