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,
website, Facebook and Twitter
These daily emails are archived and
searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
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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?
Keystone State Education Coalition
Polls are showing that
education is the hands-down most important issue for PA voters heading to the
polls later this month
Where do Dem candidates for Pa.
WHYY Newsworks BY JENNIFER
LYNN MAY 6, 2014
Polls are showing that education is the hands-down most
important issue for voters heading to the polls later this month. The gubernatorial candidates — state
Treasurer Rob McCord, former DEP Secretary Katie McGinty, U.S. Rep.
Allyson Schwartz, and York
businessman Tom Wolf — agree on most education-related issues. All
four want to abolish Philadelphia's School Reform Commission, increase
early childhood education programs, enact tougher reforms on the charter school
sector, and re-evaluate the formula for distributing state aid. They also have
specific proposals that set them apart from one another.
The bumpy road map to the May
20 Democratic primary: Terry Madonna and Michael L. Young
PennLive
Op-Ed By Terry Madonna and Michael L. Young on May 07, 2014 at 2:00
PM
“D-Day,” June 6,
1944, was the never-to-be-forgotten day allied forces launched the crucial Normandy invasion that ultimately defeated Hitler and
ended World War II in Europe . In fact, this
year we commemorate the 70-year anniversary of that epic contest. But a few days before that celebration, Pennsylvania Democratic
primary voters will launch their own D-day when they resolve the party’s
fiercely contested gubernatorial primary on May 20. What started out as a
mundane, love-fest has now turned into a nasty ad-and-debate war that has
former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and U.S. Sen.Bob Casey, D-Pa., calling
on one of the candidates to remove a controversial commercial from the air
waves. How the voters will react to a
campaign turned negative remains to be seen. But each of the four remaining
candidates envisions a path to victory that might take them to the
gubernatorial nomination – or could send them home.
The Tribune-Review By John W. Peck & John J. Whelan May 7,
2014, 9:00 p.m.
The call for providing increased access to high quality pre-kindergarten programs is not a rallying cry heard only from educators. It's one coming from all segments of the community — and for a good reason. As prosecutors, our job is to hold criminal offenders responsible for their actions, which unfortunately also includes juvenile offenders. When we deal with them, we often think about their childhood and what led them to their criminal behavior. We see children and young adults who are on a self-destructive path and question: Could this have been prevented?
The call for providing increased access to high quality pre-kindergarten programs is not a rallying cry heard only from educators. It's one coming from all segments of the community — and for a good reason. As prosecutors, our job is to hold criminal offenders responsible for their actions, which unfortunately also includes juvenile offenders. When we deal with them, we often think about their childhood and what led them to their criminal behavior. We see children and young adults who are on a self-destructive path and question: Could this have been prevented?
Fortunately, there is an intervention that has been proven to
work. Investing in high-quality pre-K can help ensure that every child has the
best chance possible for academic and social success. Data collected on more
than 10,000 children throughout Pennsylvania
show that Pre-K Counts Public Private Partnership worked to reduce disruptive
problem behaviors — reducing the percentage of children with low levels of
social skills or self-control from 21 percent to 4 percent. This is significant
because 60 percent of children with high levels of disruptive, aggressive
behaviors in early childhood will manifest high levels of anti-social and
delinquent behavior later in life.
Read more: http://triblive.com/opinion/featuredcommentary/6059911-74/pre-quality-pennsylvania#ixzz3178QW0i7
Testing Run Amok: Will Bunch Nails It
They'll never catch the real
culprits
Philly Daily News
Attytood Blog by Will Bunch POSTED: WEDNESDAY,
MAY 7, 2014, 9:37 PM
The
Inquirer is reporting tonight that
the chickens are finally coming home to roost in the Philadelphia schools cheating scandal:
A criminal investigation of cheating on state tests is
expected to lead to the arrests of teachers and other employees of the
Philadelphia School District - including at least one principal - as the state
Attorney General's Office brings charges of doctoring test results, The
Inquirer has learned.
Let's be clear: While
their higher-ups placed these teachers and principal between a rock and hard
place -- commanded to improve test scores in schools that are starved of
resources, in poverty-stricken neighborhoods where kids cope with hunger and
crime just to make it to class -- the appropriate response was not
cheating...it never is. Some punishment should be meted out, although from
what's happened to so-called justice in America it's pretty safe to assume
the punishment -- certainly the proposed punishment, anyway -- will greatly
exceed the actual crimes.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Theyll-never-catch-the-real-culprits.html#IQAktHH1XgkwVvho.99
Charges expected in Phila.
school cheating scandal
CRAIG R. MCCOY AND
KRISTEN A. GRAHAM, INQUIRER STAFF
WRITERS LAST UPDATED: Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 10:05 PM
POSTED: Wednesday, May 7, 2014,
7:42 PM
A criminal investigation
of cheating on state tests is expected to lead to the arrests of teachers and
other employees of the Philadelphia
School District
Arrests imminent in
cheating scandal, sources confirm
notebook by Dale
Mezzacappa on May 07 2014 Posted in Latest news
Sources have confirmed that an unknown number of Philadelphia educators have been told to turn themselves
in Thursday in connection with a criminal investigation by the state
attorney general of cheating on standardized tests in Philadelphia schools.
The imminent arrests were
first reported Wednesday evening by the Inquirer.
The criminal investigation and charges are the latest
developments in a statewide cheating probe that began in 2011.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education ultimately called for
investigations of likely cheating at 53 District schools in Philadelphia and three
city charters.
Analyze this:
"The latter would make for a fearsome
legal opponent. CSMI, a management company to which the school, according to a
2012 Inquirer article,
pays $16.7 million (more than 41 percent of the charter’s budget), is run by
businessman and political powerhouse Vahan Gureghian, Gov. Tom Corbett’s top
campaign contributor and a member of his education transition team. The charter
enrolls the majority of Chester Upland district’s kindergarten-through-eighth-grade
students. In December, the chronically broke Chester
Upland district was placed under state
control; they had just exited 16 years of state control in 2010.
Gureghian unsuccessfully sued the Inquirer over a 2008
investigation that examined “whether the school is spending too much of its
budget on administration and too little on teaching.” The next year, he sued
the 18-year-old proprietor of a blog, Homes of the Rich, for posting a photo of
his 10-bedroom, $13.5 million, Main Line
mansion. It is surrounded by a moat. So, it appears, is his school. A state forensic analysis found that the odds
that erasure patterns were random on the reading portion of Chester Community
Charter School
How Pennsylvania
Tainted scores throw
an entire way of running schools into question.
Citypaper By Daniel
Denvir Published: 07/18/2013
The odds that 11th-graders at Strawberry Mansion
High School
Despite entreaties, Clarke is
firm on splitting sales tax between schools, pensions
notebook by Dale
Mezzacappa on May 07 2014
Posted in Latest news
At hearings this week,
School District leaders, education advocacy groups, and others have been imploring Philadelphia's City Council to swallow hard and do what the state
legislature authorized it to do: extend the 1 percent surcharge on the sales
tax and devote the first $120 million to the city's schools. District leaders have already budgeted the
money, and each day that goes by without a guarantee of recurring dollars, they
pointed out, increases the chances of another school year marked by instability
and disinvestment.
Council President
Darrell Clarke has given his answer: No.
Public lobbies Council for
more school funding
SOLOMON LEACH, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER LEACHS@PHILLYNEWS.COM,
215-854-5903 POSTED: Thursday, May 8, 2014, 3:01 AM
SEVENTH-GRADER Angela
Beqiri's math class does not have textbooks.
Terrilyn McCormick's
child sat in a classroom with more than 40 students to begin the school year
due to a staffing shortage. Fishtown
resident Danya Lingle's son was bullied and assaulted at an elementary school
with no support staff to come to his aid.
Those three were among dozens of concerned parents, students, educators
and advocates who testified before City Council yesterday, urging members to
provide the Philadelphia
School District
Federal judge strikes down
quick transfers of Philly students with autism
WHYY Newsworks BY KEVIN
MCCORRY MAY 7, 2014
Parents of children
with autism in the Philadelphia
School District
Transfers are often
necessary because not every school in the Philadelphia School
District
Education funding cuts hit
Principals
blocked Corbett protest, McCaskey student
Lancaster Online By KARA NEWHOUSE | Staff
Writer Posted: Wednesday, May 7, 2014 5:45 pm |Updated: 9:01 pm,
Wed May 7, 2014.
A would-be protest
of Gov. Corbett's Tuesday visit to McCaskey High School was
quashed by administrators, according to a student organizer. Senior Therese Deslippe, 17, described what
happened in an online document shared via Facebook on Tuesday. Corbett came to McCaskey East campus to
announce school resource officer grants. Deslippe's government class was
invited to the event. Deslippe wrote that
she and about six other students planned to protest Corbett's visit silently
with signs and fliers, citing her disapproval for education funding cuts and
increased prison funding during his tenure.
Woodland Hills proposes
cutting 19 teachers, aides
By Clarece Polke / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette May 7, 2014 10:14 PM
About 15 Woodland Hills
teachers and four teacher’s aides would be cut under the school board’s 2014-15
budget proposal in part to offset reduced state funding. The spending plan also includes a proposed
0.6-mill increase in property taxes, Pete Camarda, the interim business manager
for the district, said during a board workshop meeting tonight.
"According to Smith, increased expenditures involved
salaries in the amount of $2.3 million, benefits at $1.2 million and $1.4
million of charter school tuition."
Delco
Times By LINDA REILLY, Times Correspondent POSTED: 05/07/14, 10:32 PM
EDT |
UPPER
DARBY — The Upper Darby School District’s tentative 2014-2015 budget was
detailed Tuesday at a special meeting, and calls for a 2.3 percent tax
increase. Business Manager Edward Smith
presented details of the $173.4 million budget, which calls for an increase of
0.778 mills and results in a hike in the millage rate from 33.8 to 34.5 mills. A homeowner with a house assessed at $100,000
will pay $3,459 in taxes, an increase of $77.80 over the current year.
"There are numerous subjects
we can argue over but, in my opinion, high-stakes testing is the issue most
worth fighting over. It is a policy that is doing great harm to students and
teachers, especially in poor schools."
A Dialogue With the Gates
Foundation About School Reform
Huffington
Post by John Thompson Award-winning
historian and inner-city teacher
Posted: 05/07/2014
9:03 am EDT
Once
again, I would like to thank the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess and
the Gates Foundation's Steve Cantrell for a dialogue on school reform. Here are
my first thoughts on the conversations with Dr. Cantrell, as presented in Hess'
Aftermath: My Note to the Gates Foundation. Firstly, I am glad that we mostly stayed
focused on stakes attached to standardized tests. There are numerous subjects
we can argue over but, in my opinion, high-stakes testing is the issue most
worth fighting over. It is a policy that is doing great harm to students and
teachers, especially in poor schools. It is the policy that is most
complicating and intensifying the battles over the other issues that Cantrell
and I sidestepped. I believe that a consensus is rapidly forming among most
educators and parents that this testing mania must stop. Then, we can move on
to more humane and effective methods of accountability and school
improvement.
"Among other things, the CTU
resolution, passed by delegates to its governing body, contends that standards
contain "numerous developmentally inappropriate expectations,"
"reflect the interests and priorities of corporate education
reformers," "emphasize pedagogical techniques, such as close
reading, out of proportion to the actual value of these methods." It adds
that the upcoming aligned tests will consume "tremendous amounts of time
and resources for test preparation and administration." Despite Chicago teachers' efforts, "the
significant time, effort, and expense associated with modifying curricula to
the Common Core State Standards interferes and takes resources away from work
developing appropriate and engaging courses of study," the union
concludes."
Chicago Union Passes Resolution
Opposing Common Core
Education Week Teacher
Beat Blog By on May 7, 2014 10:25 PM
The Chicago Teachers
Union today passed a
resolution saying that it
opposes the Common Core State Standards. Unions, as Education Week has reported, have
a complicated relationship with the standards. Both the
the American Federation of Teachers (the parent of the CTU) and the
National Education Association say they support the standards
themselves but think implementation has been lousy, with states and districts
failing to provide enough teacher support or high-quality curricula. Most of
the heat has centered on the situation in one state, New York .
Now the resolution from
the Chicago
union, which represents teachers in the third-largest school district, is
adding a new wrinkle to the conversation: It's not bothering to draw the same
distinction between standards and their implementation.
State Political Rifts Sap
Support for Common-Core Tests
Assessments drawing fire as target in standards fight
Education
Week By Andrew
Ujifusa Published Online: May 6, 2014
While
nearly every state that adopted the Common Core State Standards appears to be
sticking with that commitment, political pressure is fragmenting the
environment for tests aligned with the common core and the two federally funded
assessment consortia producing them.
The
most recent tally shows that 13 states do not belong to either the Partnership
for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or the Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium. At the peak in 2010, PARCC claimed the membership of 26
states, and Smarter Balanced had 31. Currently, 16 states and the District of Columbia are sticking with PARCC,
and 22 are
in Smarter Balanced. And in some
cases, states appear to be willing to sacrifice the tests to keep the standards
themselves.
Charter schools are cheating
your kids: New report reveals massive fraud, mismanagement, abuse
Millions of dollars are being vacuumed out of public schools
and into the corporate pockets -- or fraudulent execs
Salon.com
by PAUL ROSENBERG
WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2014 10:05 AM EDT
Just in
time for National Charter School Week, there’s a new report highlighting
the predictable perils of turning education into a poorly regulated business.
Titled “Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud and Abuse,” the report
focused on 15 states representing large charter markets, out of the 42 states
that have charter schools. Drawing on news reports, criminal complaints,
regulatory findings, audits and other sources, it “found fraud, waste and abuse
cases totaling over $100 million in losses to taxpayers,” but warned that due
to inadequate oversight, “the fraud and mismanagement that has been uncovered
thus far might be just the tip of the iceberg.”
While
there are plenty of other troubling issues surrounding charter schools —
from high
rates of racial segregation, to their lackluster
overall performance records, to questionable admission
and expulsion
practices — this report sets all those admittedly important issues aside to
focus squarely on activity that appears it could be criminal, and arguably
totally out of control. It does not even mention questions raised by sky-high
salaries paid to some charter CEOs, such as 16 New York City charter school CEOs who earned
more than the head of the city’s public school system in 2011-12. Crime, not
greed, is the focus here.
No change in 12th-grade
performance on NAEP math, reading
by thenotebook on May 07 2014 Posted in Latest news
by Liana Heitin for Education Week
High school seniors' performance in mathematics and reading has
stagnated since 2009, according to a new round of results from the National
Assessment of Educational Progress.
The achievement data from NAEP, known as "the nation's
report card," show that 12th graders' average math score remained at 153,
on a 300-point scale, when comparing the 2013 results with those from
2009, the last time the test was administered. Just 26 percent of students
scored at or above the proficient level in math — again, the same as four years
ago.
In reading, the national average stayed flat at 288, on a
500-point scale, with 37 percent of students scoring at or above proficient, according
to the new NAEP report, issued May 7
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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