Daily postings from the Keystone State
Education Coalition now reach more than 3250 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,
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These daily emails are archived and
searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
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Keystone State Education Coalition
Yes, property taxes need to
be fixed. But SB76 isn't the answer
Please consider signing this petition in
support of pending Special Education Legislation
Protect Students with
Disabilities: Support HB 2138
Thousands of families and advocates for children with
disabilities spent tireless hours over the past several years urging members of
the Pennsylvania General Assembly to address the critical need for special
education funding reforms. The first
step toward those reforms — the creation of a legislative Special Education
Funding commission to examine and propose system-wide changes — was approved
three different times by the full Senate and twice by the full House of
Representatives, and was signed by the Governor last year
SB76: Yes, property taxes
need to be fixed. But the Senate bill isn't the answer: As I See It
PennLive
Op-Ed By Nathan Mains, Jim Buckheit, Jay Himes and Joseph Bard on May
08, 2014 at 2:00 PM, updated May 08, 2014 at 2:03 PM
Nathan Mains is Executive
Director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association Jim Buckheit is
Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Association of School
Administrators Jay Himes is Executive Director of the Pennsylvania
Association of School Business Officials. Joseph Bard is Executive
Director of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools
No one likes property taxes – or any tax for that matter. No
superintendent or school business official enjoys the time spent crunching the
numbers to balance the budgets, and no school director enjoys the task of
taxing his or her neighbors. However,
no matter how unpleasant they may seem, we can’t forget that taxes do a lot of
good by providing resources to build and maintain our transportation system,
make public parks available, defend our country through the military, keep us
safe with police and fire service, and yes, educate our children in our locally
governed public schools. Few will
disagree that in Pennsylvania
we rely too heavily on school property taxes to fund our children’s
education. However, legislation
before the state Senate which would eliminate this tax, is not the
answer for either schools or the taxpayers who foot the bill.
Jazz buff Sen. Vince Hughes
riffs his way through the state budget: John L. Micek
By John L. Micek |
jmicek@pennlive.com on May 08, 2014 at 4:50 PM
On one wall in state Sen. Vince Hughes’ state Capitol
office, jazz legends stare down from framed, black-and-white prints. Miles. Bird. Lady Day. Duke. They cast their
shadow over a conference table in the Philadelphia Democrat’s suite on the
building’s “E” floor (for “entropy” maybe?). And they’re as an apt a metaphor as any
to describe the experience of talking with Hughes, whose jazz solo rhetorical
style is marked by digressions and explorations that eventually return him to
the original theme of the conversation. And
on a rainy Wednesday this week, a looming $1.2 billion budget gap — and how to
fill it — was topic No. 1. It’s something that Hughes, the ranking
Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has spent a great deal of time
thinking about.
"But he said he considers the money for early childhood
“the best investment going.” He said
each dollar invested in early childhood saves $17 in later costs, including
incarceration. He said it also improves lives."
Corbett pushes more money for
early childhood education
By Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh Post-GAzette May 8, 2014 4:55 PM
In what he termed a
tight budget year, Gov. Tom Corbett came to Pittsburgh today to promote his proposal to
spend an additional $25.5 million on early childhood programs in 2014-15.
Mr. Corbett visited the
Small World Early Learning and Development Center 2, Downtown.
Small World offers a
classroom of PreK Counts in each of its two Downtown Centers. The proposed
additional money for early childhood includes $10 million for PreK Counts that
would enable 1,670 more children ages 4 and 5 to attend quality preschool
programs statewide, including about 160 in Allegheny County
"No more funneling tax dollars to testing
corporations. Instead let’s invest in child health care, nutrition, and
books. Why these? Because unlike standards and tests we have more
than 30 years worth of research
that these investments actually help children experience success in school."
“It’s poverty stupid!”
At the Chalk Face MAY 4, 2014 BY TIMOTHY
D. SLEKAR
What follows below is nothing original. It’s simply
another reminder.
I know this is an unpopular thing to say in certain education
circles but someone has to say it: Common Core State
Standards and the Smarter Balanced Assessments will do little to nothing
to help eliminate the achievement gap! Why?
Because the achievement gap is really an opportunity gap. Standards and
tests just measure the opportunities that we fail to provide our most
vulnerable students. Since 1983’s false
education crisis alert (A Nation at Risk) our public schools have been
subjected to a 30-year barrage of standards and tests. Some of those
standards have been extremely well written and some of the testing carried out
with extreme care. Some of the standards were poor in quality and the
testing atmosphere was problematic. However, good and bad, both demonstrated
one thing consistently—race, socioeconomics, and geography predict the test
scores of test takers. In other words,
standards and tests measure the historic inequities, and racial disparities our
society fails to address. Standards and tests are racially biased tools
that measure systemic poverty!
Mastery drops out; Steel to
stay in District
thenotebook by Bill
Hangley, Jr. on May
08 2014 Posted in Latest news
Following a spirited
campaign and a decisive
parent vote, Mastery Charter says it is withdrawing from contention to run
the Edward T. Steel School
At Council hearing, parents,
students plead for more money for schools
KRISTEN A. GRAHAM, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Thursday, May 8, 2014, 1:08 AM POSTED: Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 6:08 PM
PHILADELPHIA Adam
Bachmann is George
Washington High
School Philadelphia
School District
State presses criminal
charges against 5 Philadelphia
thenotebook on May 08 2014 Posted in Latest news
by David Limm and Dale Mezzacappa
for the Notebook and Kevin McCorry for Newsworks
Five School District of Philadelphia
By on May
08, 2014 at 6:19 PM
The five Philadelphia educators who are
accused of changing student answers on
the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment might not be the only ones who
find themselves facing charges related to cheating on state tests. View full sizeHarrisburg
The Attorney General’s
office, which filed charges on Thursday against those educators at Philadelphia ’s Cayuga
Elementary School Harrisburg School District
By Colin McEvoy
| The Express-Times on May 08, 2014 at 11:48 PM
The Allentown
School District presented a revised budget proposal tonight that
raises taxes 5.85 percent and taps into $3.9 million in reserve funds. But Superintendent Russell
Mayo said that budget depends on the district getting a $5.2 million
state grant that he said is in jeopardy due to the state's own financial woes. If the district does not get the grant, Mayo
said the district may have to cut 29 more positions, in addition to the 100
layoffs they already announced in March.
Post-Gazette By Laure Cioffi May 8, 2014 7:25 AM
School board members will vote Monday, May 12, on the
proposed 2014-15 budget that includes a 3.7 mill tax increase. The increase
would mean the tax rate would be 116.45 mills.
A resident living in a home with a market value of $175,500, with a
current assessment of $23,690, will pay an extra $88 in taxes if school board
members approve the 3.7 mill increase. School
board president Eric DiTullio said about half of that tax increase will go
toward the district’s $2.4 million payment into the Pennsylvania State
Employees Retirement System this year.
The Unfulfilled Promise of Brown
Next week marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision desegregating
schools. To be sure, much has changed since 1954 here in Pittsburgh and across the country. The Steel City
Despite our many
successes, Pittsburgh remains one of the most
racially segregated cities in the United States with trenchant
social, economic, health, and educational disparities. Consider this:
One-size-fits-all fails in
education
Kurt Hoffman asks in his column (Sunday News, May 4), “Are
mandated education standards fair?” No,
they are not. If we assume that educational achievement follows a distribution
that is roughly unimodal and symmetric (i.e., the bell-shaped curve), then no
matter where one draws the arbitrary line that indicates proficiency, there
will always be students, regardless of effort, who will never attain that level
of achievement. The highest standards and all the educational mandates in the
world won’t change that fact.
School boards disapprove of
Congress’s attempt to expand charter schools
NSBA School Board News Today Alexis Rice|May 8th, 2014
The National School Boards Association (NSBA), the leading
advocate for public education representing more than 90,000 local school board
members, is opposed to H.R. 10, the Success and Opportunity
through Quality Charter Schools Act, which is scheduled for a floor vote this week. Decisions regarding charter schools should
rest with the state and the local school board, not federal lawmakers, NSBA
contends. The legislation also fails to recognize that to protect student
outcomes, charter schools should be authorized exclusively by the local school
board.
“Charter schools absent school board oversight have far less
accountability for student achievement than traditional public schools,” said
Thomas J. Gentzel, NSBA Executive Director. “The school board governance
model protects student outcomes for the many, not the few, and strives to
resolve inequities in educational delivery and service.”
"But while the president may have a
view of teaching that involves more than test results, his administration's
policies have arguably failed to focus attention beyond that aspect."
Obama Administration Sends
Mixed Messages on Teachers and Testing
Education Week By Ross
Brenneman Published Online: May 6, 2014
In a ceremony held in the White House East Room last week,
President Barack Obama praised McComb and other Teachers of the Year
representing every state, the District of Columbia ,
and the U.S.
territories as the "best of the best." "Students know that what teachers give
them stays with them for a lifetime," the president said. He noted that
great teachers take on the role of counselor, that they become the inspiration
for their students to do big things, and that they do more than "going
through the motions of teaching to the test."
That "teaching to the test" line, and similar
statements, have made their way into the president's remarks before. In this
year's State of the Union address, for instance, Obama called for
"better support for teachers and new ways to measure how well our kids
think, not how well they can fill in a bubble on a test."
Mixed messages? Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to you too
Mr. President…..
Presidential Proclamation --
National Charter Schools Week, 2013
NATIONAL CHARTER SCHOOLS
WEEK, 2013
…."NOW,
THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue
of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United
States, do hereby proclaim May 5 through May 11, 2013, as National Charter
Schools Week. I commend our Nation's charter schools, teachers, and
administrators, and I call on States and communities to support charter schools
and the students they serve."
Chicago Teachers Union votes
to oppose Common Core
CTU cites concerns over testing, curriculum,
and "an overreach of federal power" in opposing new, more rigorous
learning standards.
In a vote that seemed to
take education observers, school district officials, and
even many teachers by surprise, delegates to the Chicago Teachers Union passed a resolution Wednesday
evening saying the union formally opposes the Common Core State Standards,
which are being implemented in schools across Chicago, Illinoisand some 44 other states. In a statement released to the media, the
union said the resolution “enjoins the city’s educators to growing national
opposition to the Common Core State Standards, saying the assessments disrupt
student learning and consume tremendous amounts of time and resources for test
preparation and administration.”
PA Charter Schools: Opportunities and Questions -
EPLC "Focus on Education" TV Program on PCN - May 11 at 3:00 p.m.
EPLC "Focus on Education" TV Program on PCN - May 11 at 3:00 p.m.
The next EPLC "Focus on
Education" episode will air this coming Sunday, May 11 at 3:00
p.m. on PCN television. This May 11 panel will discuss
what charter schools are, where they're located, what parents need to know when
considering a charter school, how charter schools are funded, how
they are held accountable for student performance, who charter students are,
what charter school "reform" efforts are being considered by state
legislators, why charters are so controversial in some places, and other issues
related to charter schools.
The panel will include:
- Ron Cowell, President of The Education Policy and Leadership Center
(EPLC) and Host of the "Focus on Education"
programs;
- Rep. James R. Roebuck, Jr., Democratic Chairman, PA House Education
Committee;
- Maurice "Reese" Flurie, Ed.D., CEO,
- Nathan G. Mains, Executive Director,
Visit the EPLC web site for resources on charter schools.
PILCOP Know Your Child’s Rights
Seminars
Join us on May 15th for one of three training
sessions on Assistive Technology and Settlements.
Public Interest Law Center
of Philadelphia
This
training series on special education law teaches parents, attorneys and
advocates how to secure education rights and services for students with special
needs. These seminars aim to bring together a diverse community of
advocates including parents, special education advocates, educators, attorneys,
and community members. Each session focuses on a different legal topic, service
or disability. Many sessions are co-led with guest speakers.
Next Trainings: Thursday May 15,
2014: Assistive Technology and Other Related Services; Settlements; Settlements
(Abbreviated Session)
PSBA members in Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware
Counties
PSBA Buxmont Region 11 and Penns Grant
Region 15 Combined Region/Legislative Meeting -- Thursday, May 15, at William
Tennent High School
-
Buffet dinner/registration, 6 p.m. ($8 charge for dinner) - Program, 7:30 p.m.
-- Minority Senate Education Committee Chair Hon. Andy Dinniman will
introduce guest speaker Diane Ravitch, author and education historian, and
former Assistant Secretary of Education.
Retiring House Education Committee Chairman Paul Clymer will also be
honored for his long time (1981) public service.
2014 CONFERENCE ON THE STATE OF EDUCATION IN PENNSYLVANIA
60 YEARS AFTER BROWN HOW ARE THE CHILDREN? WHAT ARE THE
ISSUES?
Saturday, May 31, 2014 - 9:00 AM
– 3:00 PM (8:30 Registration)
MARCUS FOSTER STUDENT UNION 2ND
FLR. CHEYNEY UNIVERSITY
Keynote
Speaker: Dan Hardy – Retired Reporter -Philadelphia
Inquirer
Distressed Schools: How Did it
Come to This?
PANELS:
- The State of
- Keystones and Graduation: Cut the
Connection
- How Harrisburg Cut District Funding,
Poured on the Keystones, and Connected them to Graduation
- Financing Our Schools: What Does it Cost
to Educate a Child in 2014 and How Should We Fund It?
- Effective Advocacy – How to be
Heard in
For
more info and registration: http://www.naacpmediabranch.org/#
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. This list will be updated, as more
information becomes available.
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