Daily postings from the Keystone State Education
Coalition now reach more than 3100 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?
Network For Public Education Calls For
Congressional Hearings On Testing
Morning Folks – apologies for not posting yesterday but I got stuck
in Orlando on my way home from the NPE
Conference in Austin
On the Investigative Journalism panel I highlighted Pennsylvania’s
“House of Charters”, including the Philly charters under federal investigation,
the Trombetta indictment, K12, Inc’s Agora Cyber’s 19,028 local TV commercials,
K12’s CEO compensation of $13 million over the past few years and Vahan
Gureghian’s Charter
School Management Company.
On the Testing to the Limit panel I detailed how my district’s
school calendar anticipates being
impacted on 106 instructional days this school year for training,
testing and retesting. That does NOT
include time spent on diagnostic/practice testing.
Thanks to the Board of Directors at Network for Public Education,
including Pennsylvania
Network For Public Education Calls For Congressional Hearings On
Testing
As participants left the
final workshops at the Network
For Public Education Conference at University of Texas, Austin, we
walked into a press conference in the building's entry room organized by NPE
leaders Diane Ravitch, Robin Hiller and Anthony Cody calling for
"Congressional hearings to investigate the over-emphasis, misapplication,
costs, and poor implementation of high-stakes standardized testing in the
nation’s K-12 public schools."
It's a valid suggestion.
Members of Congress need to learn more about high stakes testing which
determines school curriculum, takes up an inordinate amount of classroom time
and is of questionable educational value. Bring a few cameras and some news
coverage into the hearings, and the nation can begin a much needed conversation
about the growing emphasis on testing in our schools. Here's the NPE Media Release.
NPE Calls for Congressional Hearings – Full Text
Network for Public
Education March 2,
2014 NPE News
We are writing to request
that the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee hold hearings to
investigate the over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor implementation
of high-stakes standardized testing in the nation’s K-12 public schools.
Starting with No Child
Left Behind legislation in 2001, which mandated standardized testing of every
student in grades three through eight, many states have since rolled out
testing in additional grades. This emphasis on testing has increased under
policies of the Obama administration, such as Race to the Top and the NCLB
waivers, that tie test scores to teacher and principal evaluations and school
“turnarounds” and closures. There is a danger that tests now seem to have
become the purpose of education, rather than a measure of education.
The tests were initiated
to measure whether schools were delivering an education of high quality to
every child. It makes sense to determine whether all students are achieving at
a minimum level of proficiency in English and math, and standardized tests can
help discern whether they are.
Our concern is that
high-stakes testing in public schools has led to multiple unintended
consequences that warrant federal scrutiny, including the following questions,
among others.
WSJ: States Look to Curb Standardized
Testing
Opposition Forces Gain Ground as
Officials Look to Limit Time Devoted to Exams
Wall Street Journal By
STEPHANIE BANCHERO Feb. 28, 2014 7:09 p.m. ET
A long-simmering movement
to scale back the use of standardized tests in K-12 education is beginning to
see results, with policy makers and politicians in several states limiting—or
trying to limit—the time used for assessments, or delaying the consequences
tied to them. In recent months,
officials in Missouri have cut back on
allocated testing time while New York Connecticut Tennessee
Opting Out of Testing: A Rising Tide for States and Districts?
Education Week Curriculum
Matters Blog By Catherine
Gewertz on March 3, 2014 9:28
AM
As states grapple with
the huge task of building new testing regimens to reflect the common core, they
are having to turn some of their attention to fending off a growing number of
parents who want their children to skip the tests. The latest bit of evidence suggesting this
showed up yesterday in Massachusetts
Michelle Gunderson: Administrator's Pledge on Ethical Treatment of
Students Who Opt Out
Education Week Living In
Dialogue Blog By Anthony Cody on March
3, 2014 8:16 AM
On Saturday I shared a report
from Chicago teacher Michelle Gunderson about the decision by the
faculty at two Chicago
Guest post by Michelle
Gunderson.
Imagine you are 8 years
old. Your parents respectfully requested that you not participate in
standardized testing. Yet, your school system insists on putting the test in
front of you, reading the directions, and making you sit quietly for the
duration of the test. Now that over a
thousand students have opted out of testing in Chicago
It is time for
administrators to take an ethical stance and make a firm commitment to the fair
and kind treatment of children whose parents have opted them out of testing.
No free lunches? There are in Pa. schools - and they're on the rise:
The Sunday Brunch
By John L. Micek |
jmicek@pennlive.com on March 02, 2014 at 8:56 AM
Good Sunday Morning,
Fellow Seekers.
The numbers are startling
and they are, pardon the pun, food for thought:
Kindergarten
through 12th grade enrollment in Pennsylvania's public schools dropped by 73,249
to 1.78 million students between 2005 and 2013. But the number of
students qualifying for free lunches increased by 149,195 to a total of
666,393. And even though the number of
students receiving reduced-price lunches dropped by 29,534 to 100,199 over
that time, that still left 119,652 more children receiving free or
reduced-price lunch in 2013 than in 2005, The Post-Gazette reports this
morning in a story that should give everyone pause. The numbers reflect national trends, where
the poor economy is pushing more students onto the free- and reduced-price
rolls, the newspaper reported.
Enrollment down, but economy, outreach
bring more subsidized meals
By Mary Niederberger / Pittsburgh March 1, 2014 11:26 PM
In the Gateway School District
What she is sure about is
that hungry children can't learn.
It's never too late for early childhood education: Kevin Muirhead
PennLive
Op-Ed By Kevin Muirhead on March 03, 2014 at 10:00 AM
Kevin Muirhead is the head of Harrisburg Academy ’s
Early Childhood and Lower
School
As an educator with more
than 30 years of experience, I sincerely believe early-childhood education benefits
children, their families, and their communities. From improved academic
outcomes to the economic savings to schools and states, the benefits of
high-quality early childhood education are irrefutable. The National Education Association, which is
committed to advancing the cause of public education, states: “Research shows
that providing a high-quality education for children before they turn five
yields significant long-term benefits. One
well-known study, the HighScope Perry Preschool Study, found that individuals
who were enrolled in a quality preschool program ultimately earned up to $2,000
more per month than those who were not.
“Gov. Tom
Corbett, Cawley and other officials in the Corbett administration are visiting
high-performing schools across Pennsylvania
Lehigh Valley Live By Express-Times
staff on March
03, 2014 at 7:15 PM
Pennsylvania Lt.
Gov. Jim
Cawley today visited the Nazareth
Area School District to present the Governor’s Award for Excellence in
Academics to two district schools. Nazareth
Area Middle School and Bushkill
Elementary School each received a banner for academic performance on
the state's 2012-13 School
Performance Profile. The middle
school scored 95.4, the highest in the district and the second-highest of all
63 public schools in Northampton County , according to Cawley's office; the county's
highest score was 96.4, at Hanover
Elementary School. Bushkill
Elementary School
Education Week By Caralee
J. Adams Published Online: March 3, 2014
For Dennis W. Creedon,
teaching children about art is as important as teaching them math or reading. "People see it as a frill, but it's not
a frill. It's actually the center of the core," said the 59-year-old
assistant superintendent in thePhiladelphia
school district. "If you cut these out of schools, you are really
cutting the heart out of our children and their future." A big part of Mr. Creedon's leadership has
involved championing the arts, connecting community resources with schools, and
using research and findings on brain development to make his case. He reminds
arts groups that young artists are future ticket holders and cites the artistic
and scientific outputs of Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Leonardo da Vinci to
argue to educators that "science and creativity go hand in hand."
DN Letters: Kindergarten must be made mandatory
Philly Daily News LTE by STATE
REP. BRENDAN F. BOYLE Tuesday, March 4, 2014 , 3:01 AM
OVER THE past several
years families across Pennsylvania
In the coming months, as Harrisburg Pennsylvania
The best way to do this
is by fostering and investing in a widely available but often overlooked
resource: our young children. With this
in mind, I will introduce legislation that creates universal pre-K programs and
mandatory kindergarten in Pennsylvania
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20140304_Letters__Kindergarten_must_be_made_mandatory.html#q7TllfHOD8STAsTg.99
Philly principals to vote on contract deal with significant concessions
WHYY Newsworks
BY KEVIN MCCORRY MARCH
3, 2014
The president of the
union representing Philadelphia
School District
Phila. district has covered $1.1M in 12 charters' pension payments
MARTHA WOODALL, INQUIRER
STAFF WRITER Monday, March
3, 2014 , 1:07 AM
When city charter schools
don't pay the state teachers' pension system, the Philadelphia School
District
New All-Digital Curriculums Hope to Ride High-Tech Push in Schoolrooms
New York Times By MOTOKO RICH MARCH 3, 2014
English language
curriculums built entirely on a digital platform — replacing written textbooks,
worksheets or printed study guides — are about to enter the market from several
companies, with promises that they will change the nature of classroom learning
across the country. The Obama
administration has pledged to provide high-speed Internet connections to 15,000
schools over the next two years, districts are purchasing tablets and laptops
for students, and on Friday, President Obama announced $400 million in
corporate commitments from the software companies Adobe and Prezi, which will
donate software to teachers. Meanwhile, other companies are rushing in.
On Monday at an education
conference in Austin , Tex. ,
Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New
York City
Curmuducation Blog Monday,
March 3, 2014
(video runtime 5:19)
I don't reblog a lot of
other people's stuff here, mostly because I am a small, low rung on the edublog
ladder, and if you're reading me, you've probably read most of what I have. But
if I can add just five more views to this video, I've served a useful purpose
today. Mercedes Schneider is one of my
teacher heroines. We've never met, but she's taught me a ton about what is
really going on, and she's taught me a lot about how to be an activist-writer
while still serving your students in a classroom. At last weekend's Network for Public
Education conference, she sat on a panel about CCSS and used her five minutes
to hit many of the same fatal flaws that I hate in CCSS. Most of all, the
intent to completely cut my professional classroom teacher
I'm-actually-standing-in-front-of-these-live-human-students judgment out of the
educational loop. I also recognize the notion that a classroom teacher's role now
includes serving as a buffer between students and what the Powers That
Be want to inflict on them.
So take five minutes and listen to what a passionate fan of public education and teaching the way it was meant to be has to say.
So take five minutes and listen to what a passionate fan of public education and teaching the way it was meant to be has to say.
Why school isn’t for children anymore — teacher
The Washington 4:00 am
Dawn Neely-Randall, a
24-year veteran teacher in Ohio
Virtual Schools in the U.S.
National Education Policy
Center Report by Alex
Molnar, Jennifer
King Rice, Luis
Huerta, Michael K.
Barbour, Gary
Miron, Sheryl
Rankin Shafer, Charisse Gulosino, Brian Horvitz March 4, 2014
This second annual report
in a series on virtual education is organized in three major sections. Section
I examines the policy and political landscape associated with virtual schooling
and describes the current state of affairs related to finance and governance,
instructional program quality, and teacher quality. The authors analyze to what
extent, if any, policy in the past year has moved toward or away from the 2013
recommendations. Section II
reviews the research relevant to virtual schools. It finds that despite
considerable enthusiasm for virtual education in some quarters, there is little
credible research to support virtual schools’ practices or to justify ongoing
calls for ever-greater expansion. Section
III provides a descriptive overview of full-time virtual schools and their
expansion based on data gathered from state, corporate, and organizational
sources. Details on enrollment include the student characteristics of
race/ethnicity, sex, free and reduced- price lunch eligibility, special
education designation, ELL status, and grade level. Other information includes
student-teacher ratios. In addition, details on student achievement include
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) ratings, state ratings, and graduation rates.
Obama to Propose Race to the Top for Educational Equity
Education Week Campaign
K-12 Blog By Alyson Klein on March
3, 2014 7:25 PM
The Obama administration
wants to focus the next round of the Race to the Top program on bolstering
educational equity for disadvantaged students, according to sources. The administration's fiscal year 2015 budget
proposal—which is slated to be released Tuesday—seeks a $300 million iteration
of the administration's signature Race to the Top program aimed at enticing
schools to close the achievement gap. It's unclear if the money would go to
districts, states, or some combination. The
program would include a teacher-equity component, as well as seek to close gaps
in other areas, such as student discipline. The administration has already put
forth guidance to
encourage districts to ensure that minority students aren't punished more—or
more harshly—than others. That move prompted questions
in a letter from U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the
House education committee, and other key Republicans on the panel. Separately, the department is already at work
on a "50-state
strategy" on teacher equity, which is aimed at ensuring that states
give students from low-income families the same access to effective teachers as
their more advantaged peers.
Director Steve McQueen wears NSBA wristband at Oscars
It wasn’t designed by
Fred Leighton and couldn’t be measured by carats, but it carried an important
message. Director Steve McQueen (L) and
actor/producer Brad Pitt accept the Best Picture award for ’12 Years a Slave’
onstage during the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre on March 2, 2014 in Hollywood,
California. Getty Images/Kevin Winter Steve
McQueen, Director of “12
Years a Slave,” wore the National School Board Association’s (NSBA) red
wristband for its “Stand Up 4
Public Schools” campaign as he accepted the Oscar for the Best Picture at
the 2014 Academy Awards. NSBA’s “Stand Up 4 Public Schools“ campaign
centers on creating strong public schools, governed by school boards, to ensure
that all students have the opportunity to learn 21st century skills and are
prepared for higher education and the workplace.
NSBA comments on Race to the Top early education grants
NSBA School Board News
Today Lawrence
The National School
Boards Association (NSBA) has weighed in on a new $250 million federal Race to
the Top (RTT) grant program for early childhood care and education, saying it
shares the U.S. Department of Education’s commitment to ensuring that all
children arrive at school ready to learn. But NSBA is also urging the education
department and its partner in the grant, the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS), to “require significant local education agency (LEA)
involvement” in state applications for the competition. In a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne
Duncan and Kathleen Sebelius, director of HHS, which is also participating in
the grant, NSBA Interim Associate Executive Director Reginald M. Felton noted
that local school districts “are essential in the P-3 continuum of education
and care, and the success of the RTT- preschool program will be improved by
integrating the perspective of local schools boards.”
High Quality Pre-K:
Families Need it, Voters Want it – County Meetings
PCCY February 21, 2014
Only 16% of children in southeastern Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Pennsylvania
Help This Campaign Succeed. Join the
County Organizing Meetings:
Register
Now! EPLC’s 2014 Education Issues Workshops for Legislative Candidates,
Campaign Staff, and Interested Voters
EPLC’s Education Issue
Workshops Register
Now! – Space is Limited!
A Non-Partisan One-Day Program forPennsylvania
A Non-Partisan One-Day Program for
Wednesday, March 19, 2014 in Monroeville ,
PA
Thursday,March
27, 2014 in Philadelphia ,PA
Thursday,
Auditor
General DePasquale to Hold Public Meetings on Ways to Improve Charter Schools
Seeks
to find ways to improve accountability, effectiveness, transparency
The public meetings will be held:
- NEW:
Time is limited to two hours for each meeting.
Comments can be submitted in writing by Wednesday, Feb. 19, via email to Susan
Woods at: swoods@auditorgen.state.pa.us.
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
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