Daily postings from the Keystone State Education
Coalition now reach more than 3050 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?
“When (PISA) scores
are aggregated
to reflect poverty, American students in schools where less than 10% of the
population is on free lunch are first in the world in reading and science, and
fifth in the world in math, indicating that the strongest implications of PISA
data are not about American achievement as a whole, but about the adverse
effects of poverty on student achievement.”
Downingtown
school ranks first in state performance scores
KATHY BOCCELLA, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER LAST
UPDATED: Friday, December 13, 2013 , 2:01
AM POSTED: Thursday, December 12, 2013 ,
5:11 PM
The exams are just one measure - student
improvement and graduation rates are others - used to come up with a profile
number, which replaces the state's Adequate Yearly Progress measure. Many
educators have assailed the tests as costly and unreliable measures of academic
performance that will lead to higher dropout rates.
The average score for traditional public
schools statewide was 77.1. Brick-and-mortar charter schools averaged 66.4 and
cyber charters 46.8.
How
PA school performance grades were calculated
By Jan Murphy |
jmurphy@pennlive.com on December 11, 2013 at 6:42 PM
The state Department of Education was the
grader and it used a 100-point scale to grade each school. The grade was
calculated this way:
• 40 percent based on percentages of students
who scored at or above grade level on standardized tests;
• 10 percent on a school’s progress in closing
the achievement gap between white and historically under-performing groups
(poor, minority, non-English speaking, and special needs students).
• 40 percent on academic growth as determined
by the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System, which tracks academic
progress of groups of students from year to year in tested subjects.
• 10 percent on other academic indicators that
assess factors that contribute to student achievement such as graduation rate,
grade promotion rate, attendance rate, among others.
Schools also can get extra credit for
high-level performance on state and industry assessments as well as the percentage
of students earning scores on Advanced Placement tests that qualify for college
credit.
State
releases school performance scores
The results are finally complete.
In what the state calls a major overhaul in
the way student achievement is assessed, the Department of Education released
its 2012-13 School Performance Profile scores on Wednesday. View them HERE
Scores had initially been released in October,
but data glitches made scores from about 600 of 3,000 schools unavailable. With
all of the scores finally posted, a more accurate view of achievement is
finally possible. Of the 189 schools in Lackawanna , Luzerne, Monroe ,
Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming
“Based on a scale of 100, the average SPP score for traditional
public schools was 77.1, brick and mortar charter schools was 66.4 and cyber
charters was 46.8.”
PSBA
says results of School Performance Profiles illustrate need for consistent
accountability
PSBA website 12/12/2013
The release of yesterday's School Performance
Profile (SPP) results further illustrates the need for all schools to be held
to the same financial and academic accountability requirements as their
traditional public school counterparts especially as the General Assembly
discusses the need for charter school reform.
Based on a scale of 100, the average SPP score for traditional public
schools was 77.1, brick and mortar charter schools was 66.4 and cyber charters
was 46.8. According to Acting Secretary of Education Carolyn Dumaresq, a
70-point score or higher is the mark of moving toward success. While there is
room for improvement for all schools, it is clear charter schools, especially
cyber charter schools, need to be held to the same accountability standards as
traditional public schools so all students receive a quality education.
- See more at: http://www.psba.org/news-publications/headlines/details.asp?id=6743#sthash.c28rIzH1.dpuf
Contract
reflects ed-reform group's rise to power in Philly
When Mayor Michael Nutter appointed Sylvia
Simms to the School Reform Commission (SRC) in January, he lauded her as a
“community leader, parent, former School District
employee and graduate” who “understands from a grass-roots level how important
it is to educate our children.”
What wasn’t disclosed was that the
organization she founded, Parent Power, had been offered a $7,500 contract last
summer from the Philadelphia School Partnership (PSP), a group that advocates
the growth of charter schools and curbs on the teachers’ union. It is unclear
whether the contract, a copy of which was obtained by City Paper,
was ever executed. The document is not signed — though a knowledgeable source
says that it ultimately was — and neither PSP nor Simms would discuss it.
SB1085:
Not all charter school groups want to kill pending charter bill: PennLive
letters
Penn Live Letters to the
Editor by EMILY YAGER, regional press secretary,
StudentsFirst, on behalf of Philadelphia Black Alliance for Educational
Options, PennCAN, Philadelphia Charters for Excellence, Pennsylvania Coalition
of Public Charter Schools and Students First PA.
onDecember 12,
2013 at 3:14 PM ,
updated December 12, 2013 at 4:34
PM
on
We feel compelled to respond to a few of the
inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the commentary from Dr. James Hanak
regarding Senate Bill (SB) 1085. ("State
Senate should reject misnamed 'charter school reform,'" Dec. 3).
No one believes that SB 1085 is perfect, but
it is misleading to imply that education reform organizations do not support
this bill. We do not agree with the arbitrary five percent cut to cyber
schools, but that does not mean that we reject the entire bill. All of the
Pennsylvania reform organizations signing this letter are committed to
improving the current bill and getting it passed as opposed to “scrapping” all
of the difficult work that has been done and starting over, as proposed by Dr.
Hanak.
Senate
Bill 1085: The word “reform” + disgruntled special interest groups does not =
good policy
Education Matters in the Cumberland Valley December 13,
2013
Politicians who support SB 1085 are sending
voters a message that anything labeled charter school “reform” will be
beneficial to Pennsylvanians. They also say that SB 1085 must be good, because
a diverse group of organizations opposes the bill—including teachers’ unions,
cyber schools, school boards, and superintendents. By their logic,
“none got all and all got some,” so it must be great legislation.
The real truth is that the policy is just so
damaging, so costly, and so far-reaching that every Pennsylvanian ought to be
alarmed. As another saying goes, where there’s
smoke, there’s fire. To be clear, SB
1085 will not strengthen the public education system in PA, will not improve
the performance of public schools (charter or traditional), and it will not
create efficiencies for taxpayers.
By Sara K.
Satullo | The Express-Times on December 12, 2013 at 10:16 PM
The Allentown
School District's proposed preliminary budget has a $10.6 million
shortfall and the district's savings account is almost tapped out. Superintendent Russell
Mayo gave the school board a glimpse of the 2014-15 tentative spending
plan tonight. But he cautioned it is a fluid document that will change many
times before the June final adoption.
The numbers are all projections and don't rely
on any increase in state education funding. The tentative plan would hike taxes
to the maximum 3.2 percent Allentown
It does depend on the $9.6
million boost in state aid the district got at the last minute
House
Roll Call vote on Budget Bill
New York Times December 12, 2013
“The budget deal appeared to mark a significant shift by House
Republicans away from the uncompromising confrontation of recent years fueled
by tea party-aligned politicians and outside conservative advocacy groups.
After multiple standoffs and threatened defaults and one actual shutdown, polls
show that the Republican brand has been badly damaged among voters, and even
some of the most conservative Republicans said they were ready for a breather.”
House
passes 2-year bipartisan budget deal
The House passed an 2-year bipartisan budget
deal Thursday evening, possibly signaling a truce in the spending showdowns
that have paralyzed Washington
Approval of the budget was the House’s final
action of 2013. Earlier Thursday, lawmakers agreed unanimously to approve the
National Defense Authorization Act, which sets military pay and policy, and to
extend current agricultural policy after negotiators failed to complete a new
Farm Bill. The Senate is poised to pass
the budget and defense bills next week. House and Senate leaders say that votes
on a new Farm Bill will be held after Congress returns to Washington
GOP
and conservative groups: The breakup begins
Politico By ANNA PALMER and JAKE SHERMAN |
12/12/13
7:10 PM EST
House Republicans and big money conservative
groups are going through a breakup.
Groups like FreedomWorks and Heritage Action
demanded Republicans reject Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget deal — or else. But 169 Republicans approved it anyway
Thursday night.
And even though the deal itself was relatively
small, it’s still a big moment for House Republicans.
For the first time since they took back the
House in 2010, a strong majority of Republicans have rejected the political
absolutism encouraged by the professional right that mired Congress in gridlock
for years and culminated in a government shutdown this fall.
“But not in the United
States
Top-performing PISA
·
They invested more in their
harder-to-educate students than their easier-to-educate students.
·
They worked hard to make sure that young
children and their families had a lot of support before the kids arrived at the
school door.
·
They started recruiting their teachers from
their most talented high school graduates rather than their least talented
graduates.
·
They insisted that all their teachers really
master the subjects they would teach and spend at least a year mastering the
craft of teaching.
·
They provided an extended period of
mentoring for new teachers under the supervision of master teachers.
·
They provided strong support for the
continuing development of their existing teaching force.
·
They constructed real career ladders for
teachers and paid them well.
·
They wrote very demanding standards for the
achievement of their students, incorporating the kinds of skills needed to
succeed in the world's most advanced economies, developed a strong curriculum
to match those standards and invested in very high quality assessments based on
that curriculum.
·
They strengthened their vocational and
technical education systems and developed their applied learning systems to
provide expanded opportunities for students to enter the adult world with
confidence, skill, experiences and connections that would enable them to become
productive and fulfilled.
- Not least
important, they provided their ministries of education with the authority
and resources they needed to lead and implement this extraordinarily
complicated dance.”
The
Meaning of PISA
Education Week Top Performers Blog By Marc Tucker on December
5, 2013 12:27 PM
So the top-performing countries move a little
further ahead of us and the gap widens. In most OECD countries this news
would be a call to arms. Their education leaders would be combing the PISA United States
“When scores are aggregated
to reflect poverty, American students in schools where less than 10% of the
population is on free lunch are first in the world in reading and science, and
fifth in the world in math, indicating that the strongest implications of PISA
data are not about American achievement as a whole, but about the adverse
effects of poverty on student achievement.”
Poverty
and the PISA
Education Week View from the Bronx
Blog By Ilana
Garon on December 13, 2013 12:32
AM
I got a lot of email after last week's post,
in which I talked about the results of the Program for International Student
Assessment--PISA--and how American
15-year-olds were falling behind their international peers (with whom
they had previously been comparable or surpassing) in math, science, and
reading. Readers made some interesting points, some of which I'd like to
reiterate here:
“The only reasonable
conclusion is this: officials in Shanghai are
only counting children with Shanghai PISA Washington agrees with this hypothesis, saying
in an email to me: “By the time PISA
Attention
OECD-PISA: Your Silence on China is Wrong
Education Next By Tom
Loveless 12/12/2013
On December 3, scores were released from the
2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test given every
three years to 15 year-olds around the globe. Shanghai Shanghai
has a school system that excludes most migrant students, the children of
families that have moved to the city from rural areas of China PISA
continue to promote a distorted picture of Shanghai
Schools
Use Web Tools, and Data Is Seen at Risk
New York Times By NATASHA SINGER Published: December 12, 2013
Public schools around the country are adopting
web-based services that collect and analyze personal details about students
without adequately safeguarding the information from potential misuse by
service providers, according to new research.
A study, which is expected to be released on Friday, by the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School in New
York
Many contracts, the study found, failed to
list the type of information collected while others did not prohibit vendors
from selling personal details — like names, contact information or health
status — or using that information for marketing purposes.
Educational
Publisher’s Charity, Accused of Seeking Profits, Will Pay Millions
New York Times By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ Published:
December 12,
2013
The Pearson Foundation, the charitable
arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, will pay $7.7
million to settle accusations that it repeatedly broke New York State
2014
PA Gubernatorial Candidate Plans for Education and Arts/Culture in PA
Education
Policy and Leadership
Center
Below is an alphabetical list of the 2014 Gubernatorial Candidates and
links to information about their plans, if elected, for education and
arts/culture in Pennsylvania
FEBRUARY 1ST, 2014
The DCIU Google Symposium is an opportunity for teachers,
administrators, technology directors, and other school stakeholders to come
together and explore the power of Google Apps for Education. The
Symposium will be held at the Delaware County Intermediate Unit. The
Delaware County Intermediate Unit is one of Pennsylvania
NPE National Conference
2014
The Network for Public Education November 24, 2013
The Network for Public Education is pleased to announce our
first National Conference. The event will take place on March 1 & 2, 2014
(the weekend prior to the world-famous South by Southwest Festival) at The University of Texas
at Austin
In the coming weeks, we
will release more details. In the meantime, make your travel plans and click
this link and submit your email address to receive updates about the NPE
National Conference 2014.
Congratulations! Getting elected to the school
board was the easy part…..
PSBA New Board Member Training: Great Governance, Great Schools
November 2013-April 2014
Register
Online »
Print
Form »
November 2013-April 2014
Register
Online » Print
Form »
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
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
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
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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