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postings from the Keystone State Education Coalition now reach more than 1900
Pennsylvania education policymakers – school directors, administrators,
legislators, legislative and congressional staffers, PTO/PTA officers, parent
advocates, teacher leaders, education professors, members of the press and a
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advocacy organizations via emails, website, Facebook and Twitter.
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These daily
emails are archived at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg
Anybody out there know what the
comparable Pennsylvania
numbers are?
tweet from Rita
Solnet@ritacolleen on April 14, 2013
In 1996,
FL spent $4.44 per student on testing. Last yr, $30.59
- according to #HarpersIndex
in the May Harpers.
PPG Details Pennsylvania’s NCLB Waiver Request
Weekend
Edition - Pennsylvania Education Policy
Roundup for April
13, 2013 : Campbell ’s
law and Rhee-visiting the DC test cheating scandal
This article provides a good overview of the contents of PA’s NCLB waiver
request…
No Child Left Behind gauge may end in
Pennsylvania
Education waiver would release Pa. from mandates
By
Mary Niederberger / Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette April
15, 2013 12:14 am
Adequate
yearly progress has been the assessment measurement for schools and school
districts in Pennsylvania
since the enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind Law in January 2001. But this standard, known as AYP, will
disappear if an application for a waiver submitted by the state Department of
Education to the U.S. Department of Education is granted.
DELCO Hi-Q all-stars excel outside the
classroom
Published: Sunday, April 14, 2013
Delco
Times By VINCE SULLIVAN vsullivan@delcotimes.com @vincesullivan
This year’s All-Delco Hi-Q team
members have varying areas of interest and different plans for the future, but
a handful share some similar qualities. Of
the 21 students chosen as the best Delaware
County has to offer, no
less than five will graduate in June at the top of their respective classes.
Doug Yamamoto, an Interboro
High School senior who
has been on the Hi-Q team for three seasons, is his class valedictorian. Grace
Chang from Penncrest
High School will also
finish ranked No. 1. Cardinal
O’Hara High
School senior Alex Fox is valedictorian as well.
Making It
All Add Up – Delco’s Top Educators Share the Secrets of Their Success
By
VINCE SULLIVAN vsullivan@delcotimes.com @vincesullivan Monday, April 15, 2013
In his 37 years in the
classroom, Chichester
High School mathematics
teacher John Cole has seen many things evolve, but just as many things stay the
same. With the influx of new technology
into schools, such as smartboards and graphing calculators, students have much
better tools to enhance their learning, Cole said.
Karen Heller: 'Mr. Shutt' guides
Masterman's chess champions
Karen
Heller, Inquirer Columnist POSTED: Sunday, April 14, 2013 , 5:21 AM
The champions gathered in the
basement, their haunt, huddled over vinyl chess mats, plastic pieces, and
rickety clocks. On a spring day, the place was a sweaty, smelly, noisy,
airless, sunless cell. Winter, too. In June? Worse. And, yet, joy.
The Julia
R. Masterman
Middle School won the
kindergarten-through-eighth-grade U.S. Chess Federation's quadrennial
SuperNationals V at Nashville 's
Opryland last weekend - 5,335 students in attendance - after a substantial
drought of 11 years. Masterman, with grades five through 12, has won 10 top
titles since 1991. The school's closets are stuffed with oversize trophies,
many the same height as younger players.
Masterman was coached to glory
by Steve Shutt, 71, who spent four decades inspiring chess players, half at
Masterman, before - and this is important - he retired last June.
CHS alumni include PA House Education Committee Minority Chairman Jim
Roebuck, Philly School Reform Commission Chairman Pedro Ramos, former PSBA
President Bill LaCoff and Keystone
State Education Coalition
co-chairs Mark Miller and Larry Feinberg….
As Central High School
wins Philly's mock trial championship, students find a community and a voice
WHYY Newsworks By Kishwer
Vikaas March 22,
2013
Two years ago, Central High School student Melisa Nelson was
terrified of public speaking. She knew she wanted to improve. But how? Enter
the Central High School Mock Trial Team, one of over 30 citywide teams. On Saturday, March 16, the unassuming 17-year
old Nelson, now a senior, took the witness stand inside an overflowing simulated
courtroom at Temple University Beasley School of Law and put her
five-hour-a-day practices to work at the John S. Bradway High School Mock Trial
Competition.
No shortage of opinions when it comes to Upper Darby school budget
Delco
Times By LINDA REILLY Times Correspondent Published: Sunday, April 14, 2013
UPPER DARBY — Upper Darby
School District officials received an overview of findings gathered from
community focus groups regarding handling the $9.7 million gap in the
district’s $169 million preliminary budget at Tuesday’s board meeting. Harris Sokoloff, director of the Penn Project
for Civic Engagement, presented opinions of the 484 people who attended the
four public forums in February and March, double the number expected. “Our goal was first to inform the public
about the school budget and our second goal was to get input from the community
about choices and the kinds of things the community would or would not
support,” Sokoloff said.
“Beyond a break on rent, D3 hopes to create a community where young
teachers can find support. The developers are partnering with Teach for America , which will move its regional
headquarters into office space at Oxford
Mills.”
Changing Skyline: Cool affordable housing
for young teachers
Inga
Saffron, Inquirer Architecture
Critic POSTED: Monday, April 15, 2013 , 5:15 AM
It's easy to imagine the
sprawling 19th-century brick mill on South Kensington's Howard Street as just another high-end
apartment complex for twentysomething professionals, the newest outpost on Philadelphia 's
ever-advancing frontier of gentrification.
Situated a few blocks north of
Fishtown's hipster bars and BYOB food shrines, Oxford Mills preserves the kind
of authentic architectural details that make young, and not-so-young, renters
swoon: high ceilings, huge windows, thick wooden beams. The amenities hail
straight from the wired generation's handbook. Plans call for an office
incubator that rents desk space by the day and a public cafe that spills onto a
sliver park furnished with outdoor tables and a fire pit. You know, for those
cool, late summer nights when you want to linger with friends.
But Oxford Mills, which will
hold a ceremonial groundbreaking Wednesday, ventures down an uncharted path. It
is being built by a private company, D3 Real Estate, which intends to market
the units as affordable housing to teachers, especially novices working in
programs like Teach for America ,
and others who fall into the growing category known as "the working
poor."
If 'teaching to the test' bugs you, don't
blame the test
WHYY Newsworks By Chris
Satullo @chrissatullo April 14, 2013
Some parents have begun pulling
their kids out of statewide standardized testing. They say its stresses out
their kids, for no good reason. This is
part of a growing rebellion against so-called high-stakes testing. Many feel these
batteries of test are harmful to kids and to education, leading to evils such
as cheating and teaching to the test. Well,
I agree that the status quo on testing is disgraceful – but not for exactly the
same reasons.
I think testing kids to
generate useful data a on their progress, and b) on the performance of the
adults charged with educating them is not only defensible, but in fact
necessary.
“This more assertive stance is
particularly important at a time, Gentzel said, when critics of public
education are negatively influencing public opinion and there are supporters of
school choice whose interests are anything but altruistic.”
The New NSBA: ‘We will
make our presence felt’
NSBA School Board News
by Del Stover April 13th, 2013
The “new NSBA” will take
the battle to those who look to dismantle the nation’s public education
system—and its leaders intend to play a more influential role in future policy
debates over school reform and local school board governance. That was the message delivered by Thomas J.
Gentzel, NSBA’s new executive director, at NSBA’s annual conference First
General Session Saturday. The NSBA Board
of Directors and state school boards association leaders have spent the past
year working on a new strategic direction for NSBA, and Gentzel offered
conference attendees a brief outline of the organization’s future plans.
“NSBA intends to make
its presence felt—in our services to state school boards associations, and in
our advocacy for public education … in Congress, in the courts, in the media,
and in the public arena,” he said.
Hearing
Set on Cheating Claim in Capital
New York Times By MOTOKO RICH Published: April 12, 2013
The City Council in Washington will hold a
hearing next week after a memo warning officials of cheating on standardized
tests during the chancellorship of Michelle A. Rhee surfaced
Thursday night. Allegations of cheating
have dogged Ms. Rhee — now a lightning rod in education circles for her
advocacy through StudentsFirst, a nonprofit group she founded — since an investigation
by USA Todayfound high rates of erasures on standardized tests at a Washington elementary
school. Although subsequent
investigations by both the city’s inspector general and the federal Education
Department concluded that widespread cheating had not occurred, a memo that
said 191 teachers in 70 schools were “implicated in possible testing
infractions” in 2008 has ignited calls for further inquiries.
Yes, Rhee saw the test cheating memo
The education world is abuzz
over the publication by
independent journalist John Merrow of a secret memo that says nearly 200 D.C.
educators may have cheated on standardized tests in 2008 when Michelle
Rhee was schools chancellor. (You can read the
memo and more here.)
Just to be clear, because some
have wondered, Rhee did see the memo, according to Merrow.
Rhee-thinking D.C.
Philly
Daily News by Will Bunch Sunday, April 14, 2013 , 8:07 PM
Michelle
Rhee has travelled a long way on the good name she made for herself by
reporting higher student achievement as superintendent of schools in Washington , D.C. (never
mind that her reforms were so unpopular that her patron, ex-Mayor Adrian Fenty, was voted
out of office). Since leaving that post, Rhee has become a highly visible
spokeswoman for corporate education reform -- high-stakes testing, charter
schools, crushing the teachers' union and what not -- as head of the
organization Students First. You may have seen her the other day on "The
Daily Show" with Jon Stewart promoting her new book. She's doing very
well!
Common Core Non-Fiction Reading Task #1: The DC Erasure Study Memo
Education Week Living in
Dialogue Blog By Anthony Cody on April
14, 2013 8:07 PM
As all educators know, the
reading of non-fiction is supposed to be significantly increased as a result of
the new Common Core (wanted to be national) Standards.
It seems to me that the
recently uncovered "Erasure Study" memo,
written by investigator Sandy Sanford in 2009 makes a fine primary source
document to be used as the basis for student inquiry. This memo has been hidden
since it was first written. Its existence sheds light on the behavior of some
of the nation's most well-known education reformers, including Michelle Rhee.
As nation's schools get
more diverse, instruction of students learning English remains bleak
FoxNews By Christine Armario Associated Press Published April 15, 2013
….School-age children who speak
a language other than English at home are one of the fastest-growing
populations. Their numbers doubled between 1980 and 2009, and they now make up
21 percent of school-age kids. There
were 4.7 million students classified as "English language learners" —
those who have not yet achieved proficiency in English — in the 2009-10 school
year, or about 10 percent of children enrolled, according to the most recent
figures available from the U.S. Department of Education.
"This is part of a new
reality that our public schools are facing," said Robert Linquanti, an
expert in English learner students for WestEd, an education research agency
based in San Francisco .
"It's been coming for a long time but now it's hitting a tipping
point."
Charter
Schools Are… [Public? Private? Neither? Both?]
School
Finance 101 by Bruce Baker Posted on May 2, 2012
Data and thoughts on public and
private school funding in the U.S.
…Directly
Publicly Subsidized, Limited Public Access, Publicly or Privately Authorized,
Publicly or Privately Governed, Managed and Operated Schools
Let’s break it down:
'Core
Curriculum' Puts Education Experts At Odds
NPR.org April 14, 2013
At 2 p.m., it's crunch time for
students who write for The Harbinger Online, the award-winning, student news
site at Shawnee Mission East High just outside Kansas City , Kan.
They've been investigating an initiative to develop common curriculum and test
guidelines for states.
The young reporters have pored
over countless documents about the Common Core State Standards and talked to Kansas state legislators
who pushed for their adoption, trying to understand why they're necessary.
Study: School reform in 3 major cities
brings few benefits, some harm
Many people paying attention to
corporate-based school reform in recent years will not be surprised by this,
but a new study on the effects of this movement in Washington ,
D.C. , New York City
and Chicago
concludes that little has been accomplished and some harm has been done to
students, especially the underprivileged.
The report looks at the impact of reforms that have been championed by
Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other well-known reformers, including
Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, and, in New York
City, Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City Public Schools and
Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
NAACP 2013
Conference on the State of Education in Pennsylvania
A Call for Equitable and
Adequate Funding for Pennsylvania 's
Schools
Media Area Branch NAACP
Saturday, May 11, 2013 9:00 am – 2:30 pm (8:30 am registration)
Marcus Foster Student Union 2nd
floor, Cheyney University of PA, Delaware County Campus
Information and registration
at: http://www.naacpmediabranch.org/2013_conference.html
PA Charter Schools: $4 billion taxpayer dollars with no real
oversight
Charter schools - public funding without public scrutiny; Proposed
statewide authorization and direct payment would further diminish
accountability and oversight for public tax dollars
More U.S. Children Being Diagnosed With
Youthful Tendency Disorder
The Onion September
27, 2000
When months of sessions with a local psychologist failed to yield an
answer, Nicholas and Beverly took Caitlin to a prominent Los Angeles pediatric neurologist for more
exhaustive testing. Finally, on Sept. 11, the Sernas received the heartbreaking
news: Caitlin was among a growing legion of U.S. children suffering from
Youthful Tendency Disorder.
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