Daily postings from the Keystone State Education
Coalition now reach more than 3000 Pennsylvania education policymakers – school
directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and congressional staffers,
Governor's staff, current/former PA Secretaries of Education, 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
These daily emails are archived and searchable at
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg
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?
Charter schools were supposed to be laboratories of innovation.
In Pennsylvania
61% of low-income families
have no age appropriate books at home.
About First Book: http://www.firstbook.org/
Did you catch our weekend posting…..
PA Ed Policy Roundup for November 9, 2013 :
55 of 62 suburban Philly superintendents and 4 IU directors urge PA not to
adopt Keystones as graduation requirement
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2013/11/pa-ed-policy-roundup-for-november-9.html
Blogger
Commentary:
Charter schools were supposed to be laboratories of innovation.
In Pennsylvania
In Pittsburgh
In Philly, June Brown is
on trial, accused of defrauding the four charters she founded of $6.7 million. Joan Woods Chalker, 75, a top lieutenant in
Brown's school network who worked with Brown for more than 20 years and served
as a chief executive at one of her charters, has pleaded guilty to three counts
of obstruction of justice. She stood
accused of conspiring with Brown and the others in a scheme to defraud four
charter schools of $6.7 million, then staging a cover-up.
In Wayne, PA, K12, Inc.’s
Agora Cyber Charter used tax dollars to pay for more than 19,000 local TV
commercials. Agora has never made AYP,
but Business Week reported that it had made over $31 million for K12, Inc. in
one academic year. K12’s CEO was paid $5
million in 2011.
In Harrisburg, PA Office
of Open Records executive director Terry Mutchler said her office had received
239 appeals in cases in which charter schools either rejected or failed to
answer requests from the public for information such as budgets, payrolls, or
student rosters. She said her office ruled in favor of the schools on just six
of those appeals.
"They don't feel
they should be subject to this law, or, candidly, subject to you,"
Mutchler told senators on the state government committee, which is considering
legislation to amend the five-year-old law. "They are a cancer on the
otherwise healthy right-to- know-law."
In Palm Beach Florida Chester
Community Charter
School
SB 1085, the charter school reform bill now under consideration in
the PA Senate, would remove the language that charter schools were to serve as
models of innovation for other public schools, and it includes several provisions that would dramatically
diminish accountability to taxpayers.
Another day, another fishy charter school
Philly Daily News Attytood blog by Will Bunch SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2013 ,
7:46 PM
This
may have happened in Pittsburgh...but if you're a Pennsylvania
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Tens of thousands of dollars spent at
Pittsburgh’s finest restaurants, top-flight catering at every staff and school
meeting, administration and board retreats to exclusive resorts and spas.
That’s just for starters.
Your tax dollars went to cell phones for board member spouses, and
even to develop another school out of state.
Now the feds are investigating spending practices at the
Pittsburgh Urban Pathways Charter Schools.
KD
Investigation Gets Results: State Calls For FBI Probe Of Pittsburgh ’s
Urban Pathways Charter School
KDKA Reporting Andy Sheehan
November 8, 2013
8:28 PM
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Tens of thousands of dollars
spent at Pittsburgh’s finest restaurants, top-flight catering at every staff
and school
meeting, administration and
board retreats to exclusive resorts and spas.
That’s just for starters.
meeting, administration and
board retreats to exclusive resorts and spas.
That’s just for starters.
Your tax dollars went to cell phones for board
member spouses, and even to develop another school out of state. Auditor General Eugene DePasquale didn’t like
what he saw and has turned the matter over to federal investigators.
School
district must pay shuttered Philly charter's bill
MARTHA WOODALL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Monday, November 11, 2013 , 2:01 AM
It sounds a little Kafkaesque.
The cash-strapped Philadelphia School
District
Six Questions
for Teach for America
Yinzercation Blog November
8, 2013
Why would the Pittsburgh America
Teach for America (TFA) recruits bright young
people, fresh from our top colleges, gives them five weeks of training, and
sends them to work in mostly urban school districts. To understand the
potential problems with TFA, you have to separate these young recruits from the
program itself. Some of my own former students have gone into TFA, which is now
widely considered an excellent resume builder and has become quite competitive
on some college campuses. A couple years ago, a whopping 18% of Yale’s senior
class applied to the program. [New York
Times, 7-11-10]
While TFA may be a good thing for these young people
who wish to experience “the real world” for two years before moving onto their
“real careers,” the program is not necessarily helping students. In fact, it
may be hurting them. And there are some very big concerns about the damage TFA
is doing to public education more generally.
The Pittsburgh Public School board opened the door
to TFA when it hired the outside consultants Bellwether and FSG at the
beginning of this year to help close the district’s looming budget gap: their
winning proposal promised to help the district recruit “high quality teachers”
by “building a strong pipeline of talent through partnerships with local
universities as well as with major alternative certification providers such as
New Leaders, Teach for America, and the Urban Teacher Residency.” [Bellwether
and FSG proposal, p. 12] At the time, the district’s director of strategic
initiatives in charge of the Bellwether/FSG contract was Cate Reed, a TFA
alumna who has since left to do development work for, yes, Teach for America Pittsburgh
Here are six questions the Pittsburgh
Public School board should ask before
inking any deal with Teach for America
Pittsburgh schools
may hire from Teach for America
By Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Public Schools superintendent Linda Lane America
Hiring teachers through the alternative
certification program would be a first for the district, which has faced
teacher furloughs in recent years.
“…bringing
their (Waltons) total support for TFA to over $100 million since 1993.”
As WalMart
Writes Checks, Critics Blast Teach for America
Critics blast non-profit as 'pipeline'
for pro-corporate policies like charter schools and privatization
Published on Monday, August 5,
2013 by Common Dreams -
Lauren McCauley, staff writer
The education non-profit Teach for America has been
under increasing fire recently as critics and alumni accuse the organization of
misappropriating their original mission by backing the policies of the
"corporate education agenda" that promote privatization, the
expansion of charter schools and the undermining of teachers unions.
These criticisms come amidst news last week that
Wal-Mart owners, the Walton Family—key backers of charter school expansion and
the effort to end teacher protections—donated $20 million to the nonprofit for
"recruitment, training and professional development," bringing their
total support for TFA to over $100 million since 1993.
TFA: Is Your
Child's Teacher 'Highly Qualified?'
Huffington Post by Jason Stanford Posted: 11/06/2013 6:22 pm
Is your child's teacher highly qualified? Thanks to
a loophole snuck into the bill to end the federal government shutdown, there's
really no way of knowing.
Here's how it's supposed to work: Under No Child
Left Behind, all schools -- even the ones where the poor and minority students
go -- are supposed to hire "highly qualified teachers." If a school
hires teachers who don't meet the federal definition of "highly
qualified," they send letters home to parents about their kids'
substandard teachers and come up with a plan to fix it.
This is a great idea. It used to be that
inexperienced teachers would get stuck with the hardest jobs in underfunded,
underperforming schools. As teachers would gain seniority, they would take
their experience to better schools where the kids were easier to teach. NCLB recognized
that the worst schools couldn't get better without "highly qualified"
teachers.
Unfortunately for Teach for America
Foundation
awards Pittsburgh-region preschool math grant
By Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh November 10, 2013 11:21 PM
While the National Science Foundation has spent
millions locally trying to improve math in K-12 schools, it is making its first
investment primarily in preschool math instruction in the region with a $3
million grant to the Fred Rogers Co. The
three-year competitive grant is from the NSF's Advancing Informal STEM Learning
program. Only 8 percent of applicants won awards in this round. The work will build on the new "Peg +
Cat" television program, which debuted on PBS last month. The Fred Rogers
Co. is the executive producer of the animated show, which focuses on a girl,
her cat and how they solve problems using math.
It's time for
the state to step up on funding for Phila. schools
Philly.com opinion by DARRELL L. CLARKE Sunday, November 10, 2013 ,
3:01 AM
Darrell L. Clarke is president of City Council and represents the Fifth
Council District.
The city andSchool District of Philadelphia School District and is constitutionally obligated to
ensure adequate resources.
The city and
Tom Harkin,
George Miller Preparing Preschool Bill To Reflect Obama Plan, Early Draft Shows
Joy
Resmovits Joy.resmovits@huffingtonpost.com
Posted: 11/08/2013
12:04 pm
Retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who chairs the
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Rep. George Miller
(D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Education and the Workforce
Committee, are preparing to introduce an extensive bill that would legislate
President Barack Obama's plan to expand preschool dramatically, according to an
early draft of the bill obtained by The Huffington Post.
Some observers expect the introduction of the
"Early Childhood Education Improvement Act of 2013," as it's called
in a draft dated Nov. 6, as soon as next week. The bill is described as a
10-year initiative to improve education for children from birth through their
fifth year. It would create a new federal-state formula for grants to fund the
expansion of preschool for poor 4-year-olds. States would funnel the new money
down to various entities, ranging from school districts and charter schools to
child care centers and Head Start programs, that demonstrate they can be
"high-quality, local providers," according to a bill summary.
Business
Leaders Call for New Federal Investment in Early Learning
First Five Years Fund, The Starting Point NOV 06, 2013
Last night, a group of 120 prominent business
leaders from across the country sent a letter to the chairs of the Congressional
Budget conference committee, urging them make a wise investment in our
economy by increasing funding for early childhood education. This effort was
organized by a group of national early childhood organizations, including
FFYF, ReadyNation, America’s Edge and others. The letter reinforces the longstanding and
widespread private sector support for
early learning. The signees jointly state: “A strong, sustainable economy
hinges on a workforce that is knowledgeable, smart, persistent, and capable of
working in teams to solve complex problems, earning higher wages, and moving
their families ahead through opportunity and enterprise. That is why we cannot
close our budget deficit until we close our skills deficit.”
Paying good
teachers $20K to move to bad elementary schools works and is cheaper than
reducing class sizes
Hechinger Report Education by the Numbers POSTED
BY Jill Barshay ON November 8, 2013
A November 2013 Mathematica study conducted for the
Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education shows
that paying good teachers $20,000 to transfer to a low performing elementary
school raised the test scores of students by 4 to 10 percentile points. No
positive effect was found at the middle school level. Mathematica found that
the same test score increases could be achieved by reducing class sizes and
filling the teacher vacancies as usual. But it’s more cost effective to pay the
bonuses. “The cost savings could be as large as $13,000 per grade at a given
school,” according to the report. Furthermore, 60 percent of the 81 teachers in
the study stayed at the low-performing schools even after the bonus payments
ended.
These 11
Leaders Are Running Education But Have Never Taught
The Huffington Post | By Rebecca Klein Posted: 11/08/2013
12:17 pm
They design teacher evaluation systems, teacher
training guidelines and the types of standards that need to be taught. Yet,
they have never been teachers themselves.
These days, being a teacher is clearly not a prerequisite for becoming a
leader in education. In fact, some of the leaders with the most daily influence
on classrooms come from entirely unrelated fields.
Below we have compiled a list of some of the most
influential leaders in education who have never been teachers.
Regarding the
Separation of Church and the State’s Money: Charter Schools with Religious
Affiliations Being Publicly Funded
Jonathan Turley blog Submitted by Elaine Magliaro,
Guest Blogger November
9, 2013
As a former public school educator, I have been
following what has been going on with school reform in this country. I have
written posts about some of the groups and individuals involved in the current
reform movement (here),
the push to privatize public schools (here),
school vouchers (here and here),
and charter schools (here and here).
Despite all the research that I’ve done on the subject, I hadn’t been aware
until recently that there are many publicly funded charter schools across this
country that have religious affiliations.
Congratulations! Getting
elected to the school board was the easy part…..
PSBA New
Board Member Training: Great Governance, Great Schools
November 2013-April 2014
November 2013-April 2014
Announcing School Board
Academy ’s New Board Member Training:
Great Governance, Great
Schools
You will need a wealth of information quickly as you
jump out of the starting block and hit the ground running as a newly elected
member of the board of school directors. New board members, as well as veterans
who might like a refresher, will want to make the most of the opportunity to
attend PSBA's New Board Member Training Program: Great Governance, Great Schools
The November 13 episode of EPLC/PCN
"Focus on Education"
will discuss Special Education:
Student Rights and Services.
The hour long program produced by EPLC and PCN is broadcast on PCN
at 9:00 p.m. on the 2nd Wednesday of every month. PCN also typically
repeats the episode at later times each month.
Previous episodes can be viewed online here. Topics we have covered thus far in 2013 are school
violence, student testing, the work of school boards, how schools are funded,
the dropout crisis, parents as advocates, and arts education. To learn more, visit PCN's "Focus on Education" web page. Information
about sponsorships available for the show can be obtained by contacting Ron
Cowell at 717-260-9900 or atcowell@eplc.org.
EPLC is recruiting current undergraduate or graduate students to
serve as part-time interns
EPLC
is recruiting current undergraduate or graduate students to serve as
part-time interns beginning January or May of 2014 in the downtown Harrisburg Pennsylvania School Pennsylvania
Common
Core/Keystone Exams: The PA State Board of Education (Board) has submitted the
final-form regulation entitled “Academic Standards and Assessment."
The Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) plans to meet
and act on this regulation at our public meeting at 10:00 a.m. on
Thursday, November 21, 2013.
Regulation #6 – 326: Academic Standards
and Assessment
Amends existing regulations to
reflect Pennsylvania
The agenda and any changes to the time or date of
the meeting will be posted on IRRC’s Web site at www.irrc.state.pa.us.
Please note that any comments should be submitted to the Board prior to the
48-hour blackout period, which begins at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday,November
19, 2013. Please provide IRRC with a copy of any comments submitted, as
well. Please note that all correspondence and documents relating to a
regulation submitted to IRRC are a matter of public record and appear on IRRC’s
Web site.
For a copy of the regulation or if you have any
substantive questions regarding the regulation, please contact the Board
at (717) 787-3787.
You can also download the final-form regulation from IRRC’s Web site using the
following link:
The University
of Pittsburgh School
Pedro A. Noguera, PhD; Friday, November 15, 2013 ;
3:30 – 5:00 p.m.
David
Lawrence Hall, Room 121; 3942
Forbes Avenue , Pittsburgh
The event
is free and open to the public
Join us as we celebrate their accomplishments!
Tuesday,November
19, 2013 5:30 pm
- 8:30 pm WHYY, 150 North 6th Street , Philadelphia
Invitations coming soon!
Tuesday,
Invitations coming soon!
Register: http://tinyurl.com/m8emc4m
Building
One Pennsylvania November
21, 2013 6:00-8:00 PM
IBEW Local 380 3900 Ridge Pike Collegeville, PA
19426
Building One Pennsylvania is an emerging
statewide non-partisan organization of leaders from diverse sectors -
municipal, school, faith, business, labor and civic - who are joining together
to stabilize and revitalize their communities, revitalize local economies and
promote regional opportunity and sustainability. BuildingOnePa.org
The National School Boards Association 74th Annual
Conference & Exposition April 5-7, 2014 New Orleans
The
National School Boards Association 74th Annual Conference &
Exposition will be held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans , LA. New Orleans
General Session speakers include education advocates
Thomas L. Friedman, Sir Ken Robinson, as well as education innovators Nikhil
Goyal and Angela Maiers.
We have
more than 200 sessions planned! Colleagues from across the country will present
workshops on key topics with strategies and ideas to help your district. View
our Conference Brochure for highlights on sessions
and focus presentations.
- Register now! – Register for both the conference
and housing using our online system.
- Conference Information– Visit the NSBA conference
website for up-to-date information
- Hotel List and Map - Official NSBA Housing Block
- Exposition Campus – View new products and
services and interactive trade show floor
Questions? Contact NSBA at 800-950-6722 (NSBA) between
the hours of 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. EST.
Join the National School Boards
Action Center
Participate
in a voluntary network to urge your U.S.
Representatives and Senators to support federal legislation on Capitol Hill
that is critical to providing high quality education to America
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