Daily
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
broad array of P-16 regulatory agencies, professional associations and education
advocacy organizations via emails, website, Facebook and Twitter.
The Keystone State Education Coalition is
pleased to be listed among the friends and allies of The Network for Public
Education. Are you a
member?
These daily
emails are archived at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg
Education Voters
PA – Statewide Call to Action day April 10th
Download 1 page pdf with information about the April 10th
call-in day.
ALEC approach to charters:“No accountability, no oversight, no
transparency, no laws, no regulations. Just money for the taking.”
Philly Daily News Attytood Blog by Will Bunch POSTED: Monday, April 1, 2013 , 9:26 PM
So what happened in Atlanta
A Plague of Cheating
Yinzercation Blog April 1, 2013
With Passover ending tomorrow, perhaps we should add another plague to
the list that gets repeated at this time of year. You know: frogs, locusts,
hail, boils, and now cheating on high-stakes-tests. On Friday, the
superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools was indicted along with 34 others,
including teachers and principals, for widespread cheating – by adults – on the
state’s standardized state tests. Investigators found 178 Atlanta
“The state's pension systems currently face
an unfunded liability of more than $41 billion, and it's growing; in addition,
and in the near-term, the state budget is facing added pension costs of more
than half a billion each year for the next three years.”
Probing the constitutional crux of
Corbett's pension plan: news & analysis
By Donald
Gilliland | dgilliland@pennlive.com on April 01, 2013 at 7:00 AM
From the moment Gov. Tom Corbett announced his proposed
pension reform for teachers and state employees, his administration has
acknowledged the measure would be heading straight to court if it passed the
legislature. One key element of the
reform - changing the pension benefits of current employees - is railed against
by union leaders as being simply and straightforwardly unconstitutional.
93,000 fewer kids enrolled in CHIP
under Corbett
By Don Sapatkin, Inquirer Staff
Writer POSTED: Tuesday, April 2, 2013 , 3:01 AM
For years, the Philadelphia
Children's advocates are now awaiting the outcome of a meeting Tuesday
between Corbett and Kathleen Sebelius, U.S.
City claiming that two Brown-linked
charters owe back taxes
Martha Woodall, Inquirer
Staff Writer POSTED: Tuesday, April 2, 2013 , 3:01 AM
Two of the three Philadelphia Laboratory
Charter School
“No
accountability, no oversight, no transparency, no laws, no regulations. Just
money for the taking.”
How ALEC Is Changing the Face of
Charters
Diane Ravitch’s Blog By dianerav April 2, 2013
When the charter school movement began in the early 1990s, the promise of
advocates was that charters would be held accountable for results. There were
two promises, really: one was that there would be accountability; the other was
that there would be results. If the results didn’t happen, the schools would
close.
Now there is a new approach to charters, sponsored by ALEC (American
Legislative Exchange Council). To learn more about ALEC and to see its model
legislation for education and other issues, look here. It is a tenet of ALEC that charter schools
should be completely unregulated, unsupervised, and unaccountable. The goal is
choice, not accountability or results.
tweet from Motoko Rich @motokorich
Where your (federal) tax dollars go:
3.5 cents of every $1 goes to education
“We want to see democracy, not capitalism, survive as the root, stem,
leaves, and fruit of American education.”
We're All Stakeholders in Public
Education
A while ago I had a reader suggest that I lay off my expressions of
empathy for public school teachers and the burdens that various policies and
reform efforts have laid upon them: so-called valued-added evaluation, endless
rounds of standardized testing for their students, and public excoriation at
the hands of politicians and pundits on all sides.
I guess my thoughts sounded like crocodile tears. How could someone from
schools like ours--independent schools: tuition-driven, self-governed,
self-funding--know or care about the daily travails of public schools and their
teachers and students?
“These schools already receive tax-exempt status as non-profit
organizations. Companies that want to donate scholarship dollars already
receive the benefit of charitable tax deductions. Giving them New Hampshire
There is a broad campaign afoot to
undermine support of public schools
The most important job of government is to insure that the next
generation is educated. It isn't just because it is the right thing to do for
kids, it also is the right thing for society, to preserve and protect our
national security, insure a thriving economy and continue the tradition of
American leadership. To do the job, we need a strong public school
system.
That concept should not be difficult to grasp, and at one time it was promoted by people of all political stripes. Unfortunately, the idea that a strong public school system is important is under siege. There are several threats to public schools. One is from the neglect caused by elected officials who are more interested in their tax-cutting records than they are in education (see, e.g., Ted Gatsas, mayor ofManchester
That concept should not be difficult to grasp, and at one time it was promoted by people of all political stripes. Unfortunately, the idea that a strong public school system is important is under siege. There are several threats to public schools. One is from the neglect caused by elected officials who are more interested in their tax-cutting records than they are in education (see, e.g., Ted Gatsas, mayor of
Should Public Money Be Used for
Private Schools?
PBS Newshour AIR DATE: April 1, 2013 mp3 runtime 9:50
The Indiana Supreme Court upheld a law allowing taxpayer money to be used
for private schools through vouchers. Hari Sreenivasan examines the
implications with Kevin Chavous, executive counsel for American Federation for
Children, which promotes vouchers, and Dennis van Roekel, president of the
National Education Association.
Charter schools - public funding without public scrutiny
Proposed statewide
authorization and direct payment would further diminish accountability and
oversight for public tax dollars
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