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Pennsylvania Education Policy Roundup for March 25,
2013:
A statewide charter authorizer would have
virtually no accountability to local taxpayers.
None. Just like our cyber
charters.
If you support the items in this link you
should join the Network for Public Education
A
statewide charter authorizer would have virtually no accountability to local
taxpayers. None. Just like our cyber charters.
PA cyber
charters are state authorized – none made AYP this year; most have never made
AYP – and they are charging taxpayers
thousands more than it costs them to provide an online education; thousands
more than it costs a local school district to provide online education, and thousands more than it costs for cyber
tuition in other states.
In the
recent PA House Ed Committee hearings none of the cyber charter advocates
testified that they were underfunded…..
Is Pa. ready for
statewide charter authorizer?
PHILLY.COM BY KATHY MATHESON , The Associated Press March 24, 2013,
11:48 AM
PHILADELPHIA - With the cost and quality of charter
schools dominating the public education debate in Pennsylvania, lawmakers face
at least a dozen major bills seeking better accountability and governance of
such schools, which are publicly financed but independently run.
Much of the legislation focuses on funding formulas
and audits. Yet some charter backers say what's missing is a provision for
independent, statewide authorizers, entities that can arguably weed out bad
apples and ensure the operation of only high-quality charters.
Laurel Highlands
Board takes aim at cyber charter funding
Diana Lasko dlasko@heraldstandard.com Posted: Friday,
March 22, 2013 2:00 am
Laurel Highlands School Board, on Thursday, adopted
a resolution which takes aim at the Pennsylvania cyber charter school funding
formula. "The funding is out of
whack with what is being charged for those students to attend cyber charter
school," said Jesse Wallace, school superintendent. Jim Tobal, board president, further explained
how much cyber charter schools have cost the district. "If you add it up, in the last five
years Laurel Highlands taxpayers have paid $3,217,902.37," he said.
The partial reimbursement from the state to the
district for the 484 students enrolled in cyber charter schools from 2008-2013
is $382,000. However, the partial reimbursement was eliminated by Gov. Tom
Corbett in 2011 and has not been restored. Therefore school districts have not
received reimbursement from the state in the last two years.
The resolution, which will now be sent to Harrisburg
and local state leaders, calls for reform in the current funding formula which
Tobal said bears no relationship to actual instructional costs of distance
learning programs.
Cyber education grows
in districts, lowers enrollment at charter schools
TribLive By Tory
N. Parrish Sunday, March 24, 2013, 11:13 p.m.
Nancy Haines-Moskala is furious about the planned closing in June of her son's cyber charter school. “You are obligated to deliver the same education to our children that we were promised by you when we enrolled our children in this school,” Haines-Moskala, 43, of Lincoln Place told the board of STREAM Academy at a Wilkins meeting last week.
Nancy Haines-Moskala is furious about the planned closing in June of her son's cyber charter school. “You are obligated to deliver the same education to our children that we were promised by you when we enrolled our children in this school,” Haines-Moskala, 43, of Lincoln Place told the board of STREAM Academy at a Wilkins meeting last week.
STREAM has had its enrollment decline as more cyber
charter schools opened and traditional school districts boosted their online
offerings to bring back students who left for charter schools, taking state
subsidies with them.
Charter School Reform
Bills for the 2013-14 Legislative Session
List of pending bills from PSBA’s website
Easton Area School
District studies consolidation of underused buildings
Lehigh Valley Live By Peter
Panepinto | The Express-Times on March 24, 2013
An Easton
Area School Board member has suggested moving Easton Area Academy students
into Paxinosa Elementary School to save the district money.
School board member and former high school principal Bill Rider pitched the idea at a board meeting earlier this month.
School board member and former high school principal Bill Rider pitched the idea at a board meeting earlier this month.
On-time Philly graduation
rate has climbed 20 points in a decade
The notebook by Paul
Socolar on Mar 22 2013
The School District’s on-time graduation rate has
continued its upward trend. For a second year in a row, it climbed three
percentage points last year – to 64 percent. That figure represents the
percentage of students entering 9th grade in fall 2008 who finished high school
by 2012.
From a dismal 44 percent on-time graduation rate in
2002, the percentage of District students graduating in four years has now
grown by 20 percentage points in a decade.
Pa. students could
see three to five new state exams before graduation
The Keystone
exams have been under fire in recent months.
The Evening Sun
By KATY
PETIFORD 03/23/2013 09:01:54 PM EDT
Some students are one step closer to having
additional requirements to fulfill before they can call themselves a graduate
of a Pennsylvania high school. The State
Board of Education last week adopted a finalized version of its proposed
changes to the Pennsylvania Public School Code, with many modifications
concerning graduation requirements.
If the proposal is approved by state legislators,
starting with the class of 2017, students would need to pass three Keystone
Exams - algebra 1, literature and biology - before they don their caps in
gowns.
$150 million in tax revenue is being
diverted to unaccountable private and religious schools and is not available
for this year’s budget.
PA kids won with
vouchers-lite: As I See It
Patriot-News
Op-Ed By Elliot Holtz and D.Merle Skinner on March 25, 2013 at
6:00 AM
Elliot Holtz
belongs to the Orthodox Union’s Pennsylvania Community Advocacy Network and D.
Merle Skinner is its co-coordinator.
Businesses in the state of Pennsylvania are used to
making a difference through sacrificing. Their charitable donations,
investments in non-profits of time and resources have been commonplace
throughout the years. Many business leaders have learned what it means to
invest on behalf of others. So much so that sometimes when something comes
along that is almost too good to be true, it is hard for them to understand it.
Christie to announce
state takeover of Camden schools
Matt Katz and Claudia Vargas, Inquirer Staff Writers March 25, 2013, 5:58 AM
TRENTON - Gov. Christie plans to announce Monday
that he is taking the extraordinary step of putting the educational and fiscal
management of the Camden School District under state control, The Inquirer has
learned. As part of the takeover of what
the state considers the worst-performing district in New Jersey, Christie will
appoint a new superintendent and leadership team, shifting the school board to
an advisory role, according to Christie administration officials briefed on the
plan.
Senator Casey
introduces natural gas powered bill
Times Online By Rachel Morgan Shalereporter.com March 23, 2013
11:15 pm
HARRISBURG — Natural gas-powered school and public
transit buses might be the newest development in the Pennsylvania’s natural gas
sector. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey introduced
new legislation Friday that supports the transition of natural gas as a vehicle
fuel — creating a rebate program for the purchase of natural gas-powered buses,
as well as tax credits for natural gas filling stations and fuel.
“One of the
clearest examples of Obama’s dilemma is early-childhood education, a centerpiece of
his State of the Union speech in February. Obama has proposed offering
preschool to all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families, which
research suggests would help move children up the economic ladder. The idea isn’t cheap. W. Steven Barnett, the
director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers, who
was consulted by the White House, has estimated it could cost up to
$10 billion a year.
Rather than
raising new funds to pay to expand early-childhood education, however, Obama is
now being forced to slash it. The sequester this year will cut about
$400 million from the Head Start early-childhood education program, which
will mean that tens of thousands of poor children would lose access to it,
according to the administration.”
As Obama signs sequestration
cuts, his economic goals are at risk
Washington Post By Zachary
A. Goldfarb, Published: March 24
With his signature this week, President Obama will
lock into place deep spending cuts that threaten to undermine his second-term
economic vision just four months after he won reelection.
Obama has repeatedly
championed a set of government investments that he argues would expand
the economy and strengthen the middle class, including bolstering
early-childhood education, spending more on research and development, and
upgrading the nation’s roads and railways. He has said his comfortable
reelection victory in November shows the country is with him.
A Trib exclusive: Jeb
Bush says we must embrace the 21st century and toss our 19th-century education
model
The Tribune-Review By Jeb Bush Published: Saturday,
March 23, 2013, 9:00 p.m.
Jeb Bush is the
chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education and Digital Learning
Now! He served as the Republican governor of Florida from 1999-2007.
I started a recent day by reading The Wall Street Journal and checked on the latest chatter over Twitter. Then I downloaded an email with the latest pictures of my granddaughter, watched a video of LeBron James dunking on the 76ers and started a UC Berkeley course in quantum mechanics — all from my iPad. OK, not really on that last one but the option was there.
I started a recent day by reading The Wall Street Journal and checked on the latest chatter over Twitter. Then I downloaded an email with the latest pictures of my granddaughter, watched a video of LeBron James dunking on the 76ers and started a UC Berkeley course in quantum mechanics — all from my iPad. OK, not really on that last one but the option was there.
Read more: http://triblive.com/opinion/featuredcommentary/3682772-74/education-students-century#ixzz2OSfTsrOs
Instead of closing
schools, how about this?
Washington Post Answer Sheet Blog by Valerie Strauss on March 22,
2013 at 11:17 am
When Michelle Rhee told D.C. school residents that
she, as chancellor of public schools in the nation’s capital, was closing 23
under-enrolled schools, she promised that a lot of money would be saved that
could be plowed back into academic programs in remaining schools. It didn’t
happen; an audit years later found that the closings actually cost the city $40
million.
It remains to be seen how the most recent round of
announced closings will shake out: Chicago just said it was closing 54 public
schools this year in what seems to be the largest mass closing of schools in
U.S. history; Philadelphia said it was closing more than 20 schools, and
Washington D.C., 15 schools. School closings have become a tool of school
reformers who say the action is needed either because the targeted schools have
too few students or are failing academically — even while they support the
opening of charter schools in the same neighborhoods. In Chicago’s case, both
arguments for closing schools were made in recent years.
Thomas Gentzel,
the NSBA's executive director, said that his organization hopes to restore the
eroded authority of local school board members, who are, he emphasized, elected
officials. While there has always been a "healthy tension" between
local, state, and federal authority, he said, "we're very concerned with
the long slide over a number of years toward a diminishing role for local
school officials and increasing role for state and federal officials."
Lawmakers Introduce
Bill to Strengthen School Board Authority
Education Week By Jackie Zubrzycki on March
22, 2013 8:46 AM
A new bill focused on asserting the autonomy of
local school boards and regulating the actions of the federal education
department was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday. The
Local School Board Governance and Flexibility Act is, no surprise, supported
by the National School Boards Association, or NSBA.
Sequestration: Special-Education
Programs Steel Themselves as Cuts Loom
Post-Gazette by ELENA SCHNEIDER / The New
York Times March 22, 2013 6:02 pm
Aurora Ford, a fifth-grader with Down syndrome,
needs regular speech classes and occupational therapy, services that are
guaranteed under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. But looming
federal financing cuts could affect Aurora and her peers, because they might
mean bigger classes and fewer teachers next year.
"If you take away staff, it's a given that the
quality of education will decrease," said Stacy Ford, Aurora's mother and
a special-education advocate in Leander. "It doesn't take a Ph.D. to
figure that out."
In 2011, Texas schools were hit with a $5.4 billion
cut in state financing. And now that the state is also facing automatic federal
spending cuts that went into effect on March 1, administrators say they are
running out of cost-saving options to maintain services that receive federal
money.
'Sequester' Cuts
Still in Place Amid Budget Wrangling
Education Week By Alyson Klein
March 21, 2013 (paywall)
The U.S. Congress missed a chance last week to avert
the automatic federal spending cuts known as sequestration when
it passed legislation extending funding for all programs—including education—at
current levels, minus a 5 percent across-the-board reduction.
Lawmakers' decision means that the squeeze is likely
to stay in place for the 2013-14 school year, which districts are already
preparing for. President Barack Obama expressed dismay that Congress did not
act to ward off the cuts when it finalized its spending bill for fiscal 2013,
which was approved on March 21. But he indicated he would sign the spending
legislation, in order to prevent a government shutdown.
Will Funding
Flexibility for Schools Come With Sequestration Cuts?
Education Week PoliticsK-12 Blog By Alyson Klein on March
22, 2013 9:48 AM
So now that school districts are coping with a 5
percent across-the-board cut to all federal programs, thanks to sequestration,
many advocates are asking the department for what they see as the next best
thing to more money: Greater flexibility with the funds they actually have.
For instance, advocates are wondering how the cuts
will affect maintenance of effort, which requires states and districts to keep
their own spending up at a certain level in order to tap federal funds. Do they
get a break because they're getting less Title I and special education money?
“So there is a
divide, with merit—and blind spots—on both sides. Yes, it’s ridiculous to judge
a school (and take drastic action to intervene in it, even to close it)
exclusively on the basis of test scores. Ditto for judgments about teachers.
(“Value-added” scores—where feasible and meaningful—are better than absolute
test scores, but still are not the full measure of an educational institution
or classroom instructor.) On the other hand, student learning is the bottom line, and for too long
American public education has paid far too little heed to it when evaluating
schools and teachers.”
Accountability
Dilemmas
Education Next By Chester E. Finn, Jr. 03/22/2013
A useful
new report from Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation underscores
the painful divide between parents and education reformers on the crucial topic
of what to do about bad schools. In a
nutshell, if the neighborhood school is crummy, parents want it fixed. So do
community leaders. Ed reformers are far more apt to want to close it and give
families alternatives such as charter schools.
Dozens battle for
spots at N.J. cybersecurity center
WHYY Newsworks By Associated Press March 24,
2013
Ten people have won scholarships to attend the
nation's first cybersecurity learning center, which will be based at a central
New Jersey school. The winners earned
their spots Saturday during a competition that drew 100 participants, including
high school and college students, veterans and jobseekers. The competitors did
battle in a hands-on, interactive learning environment used by the U.S.
military.
Thanks to Rich
Kiker for this link via twitter….
Climb Three of the
World’s Highest Peaks on Google Street View
in Google, Photography, Travel | March 24th, 2013 Leave
a Comment
What’s surprising about Everest Base Camp is the
color. It’s a flinty, gray place littered with shards of Himalayan sandstone
and shale. Here and there appears a vivid green pool of alpine water. And then
there’s the red, blue and green prayer flags hung by Himalayans to blow
blessings in the wind. Google Street
View’s latest project, the World’s
Highest Peaks, takes us to Everest and two other mountains included in the
Seven Summits—the highest mountains on each of the seven continents.
PSBA opens
nominations for the Timothy M. Allwein Advocacy Award
PSBA website 3/15/2013
The nomination process is now open and applications
will be accepted until June 21, 2013 .
In 2011, PSBA created a new award to honor the
memory of its long-term chief lobbyist, who died unexpectedly. The Timothy M.
Allwein Advocacy Award may be presented annually to the individual school
director or entire school board to recognize outstanding leadership in
legislative advocacy efforts on behalf of public education and students that
are consistent with the positions in PSBA’s Legislative
Platform. The nomination process is now open and applications will be accepted
until June 21,
2013 . The award will be presented during the PASA-PSBA School
Leadership Conference in October.
PSBA officer
applications due April 30
PSBA’s website 2/15/2013
Candidates seeking election to PSBA officer posts in
2014 must file an expression of interest for the office desired to be
interviewed by the PSBA Leadership Development Committee.
This new committee replaces the former Nominations
Committee. Deadline for filing is April 30. The application
shall be marked received at PSBA headquarters or mailed first class and
postmarked by the deadline to be considered timely filed. Expression of
interest forms can be found online at www.psba.org/about/psba/board-of-directors/officers/electing-officers.asp.
Edcamp
Philly 2013 at UPENN May 18th, 2013
For those of you who have never
gone to an Edcamp before, please make a note of the unusual part of the morning
where we will build the schedule. Edcamp doesn’t believe in paying fancy people
to come and talk at you about teaching! At an Edcamp, the people attending –
the participants - facilitate sessions on teaching and learning! So
Edcamp won’t succeed without a whole bunch of you wanting to run a session of
some kind! What kinds of sessions might you run?
What: Edcamp
Philly is an"unconference" devoted
to K-12 Education issues and ideas.
Where:University
of Pennsylvania
Where:
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.
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