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
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?
Keystone State Education Coalition
"The fact of the matter is that the
School Reform Commission and District leadership have refused to create or
uphold a budget and vision for schools that keeps our children safe – and they
continue to do so today."
the notebook by Helen
Gym on May 22 2014 Posted in Commentary
A beloved 7-year-old child from Jackson Elementary School
Tragedy is not the right word when the Department of
Health requires
schools to have a medical team and emergency health plan, and our
District’s plan is to cross its fingers and call 911. Tragedy is not the right
word when the District presents public budgets that ensure a dangerous level of
staffing even as they beg for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.
Let's be clear: The losses of essential staff at schools are
not just budget cuts. These are human-rights abuses happening to our own
children on our watch.
Call it willful neglect. Call it child endangerment. But don’t
call it a tragedy.
DN Editorial: Sick of it all
Philly Daily News
Editorial POSTED: Friday, May 23,
2014, 3:01 AM
THE DEATH of any child
is a tragedy. The death of two children who fell ill while at school is
unspeakable. And while the cause of death for a first-grader at Andrew Jackson
School Jackson student died Wednesday, there was no
school nurse on duty. Nor was there a school nurse on duty in October when a
sixth-grader had an asthma attack and subsequently died. We don't know whether a nurse would have made
a difference in either case, but we do know nurses play a critical role in the
health, safety and ability to learn for thousands of children who go to school
each day.
Death of Philadelphia
Education Week District
Dossier Blog By on May 22, 2014 9:23 AM
UPDATED
Some Philadelphia schools staff members are
expected to wear black to school today in memory of a 7-year-old 1st grader who
died Wednesday after he fell ill at school.
Students from several
schools, including Kensington High School for the Performing Arts, Central High School ,
and Science Leadership Academy
Update: (11:15 a.m.)
And dozens of parents and community supporters gathered on the steps of Andrew Jackson
School , a South
Philadelphia elementary school where a student fell ill on
Wednesday and later died, to speak out about the student's death and ask for
more money for the schools, according to the Philadelphia
Inquirer. The Inquirer's update
included a statement from Melissa Wilde, the president of
Friends of Jackson and a parent of a kindergartner and 1st grader.
Schwartz tanks, Cawley
outpolls Corbett, the Midstate rises and TV uber alles - some winners and
losers from Tuesday's primary election: John L. Micek
By on
May 22, 2014 at 11:35 AM
The dust has settled.
The winners and losers have been declared. And some of the professional
campaign folks are off to other states, greener pastures and new
candidates. So now seems as good a time
as any to take quick stock of the primary election that was and run down a list
of the day's winners and losers. Because
history is written by the victors, the winners get first shot:
The All of the Above
Election: Terry Madonna and Michael L. Young
By Terry Madonna and Michael L. Young
on May 22, 2014 at 2:00
PM, updated May
22, 2014 at 2:11 PM
Before Election Day,
the outcome is unknown while the possibilities are numerous. Post-election, we
know exactly what happened. The problem is to make some sense of it. Here are six succinct take aways that try to
make some sense of what happened to Pennsylvania Democrats in their May 20th
primary, while suggesting what it may mean for the November general election:
Editorial: Lawmakers need to
cash out their $140M surplus
Delco Times Editorial POSTED: 05/22/14,
10:06 PM EDT |
This seems like common sense: If you have a deficit, you can’t
have a surplus. Those two concepts seem mutually exclusive — unless, perhaps, you’re
talking about government finances.
In Pennsylvania ,
officials are projecting a budget deficit of more than $1 billion. And yet, at the same time, the Legislature is
sitting on a “surplus” of perhaps $140 million, according to some reports. How can that be?
PA Supreme Court pushes
forward charter school’s lawsuit against Philly
By Maura Pennington | PA Independent May 21, 2014
Now, the state Supreme Court has stepped in. In March, a charter school filed a lawsuit against the district and the
School Reform Commission over the legality of the SRC’s suspensions of the
school code to enforce enrollment caps and withhold per-pupil payments. West
Philadelphia Achievement
Charter Elementary
School Pennsylvania .
Educators demand removal of
Keystone Exam graduation requirement
Key educational
stakeholders from across southeastern Pennsylvania came together to denounce
the educational and financial impact of Keystone Exams, the end-of-year
assessments which could prevent some high school seniors from receiving their
diplomas three years from now. The consensus among attendees of the April 24
Keystone Impact Briefing is that the Keystone Exams must be removed as a
graduation requirement for Pennsylvania
students.
The new regulations that
went into effect March 1, 2014 require every public high school student in Pennsylvania , beginning with the Class of 2017, to pass
the Keystone Exams in Language Arts, Algebra 1 and Biology in order to receive
a high school diploma from the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania Pennsylvania
state legislators, including Senator Andy Dinniman, Representative Dan Truitt
and Representative Chris Ross.
Acting ed secretary touts Pa.
Tribune Democrat by Justin Dennis jdennis@tribdem.com May 22, 2014
She sat down with The Tribune-Democrat on Monday to help illustrate and contextualize the “major shifts” within the department’s last three years, which she helped shepherd in after her appointment by Gov. Tom Corbett in August last year.
"Parents United believes "a lot of public policy
around education is being shaped out of the public eye," Helen Gym, its
co-founder, said. "We're also concerned about the role of big money
shaping our education policies."
Attached to the settlement were spreadsheets outlining some $35,000 PSP
spent on lobbying in 2012 and 2013. It
also listed its largest funders - including the William Penn Foundation, the
National Association of Charter School Authorizers, securities trader Jeffrey
Yass, businessman and PSP cofounder Michael O'Neill, the Maguire Foundation,
and the Patricia Kind Foundation."
Phila. Ethics Board fines
school improvement group
BOB WARNER, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Thursday, May 22, 2014, 8:37 PM
POSTED: Thursday, May 22, 2014,
2:48 PM
The Board of Ethics
announced its first enforcement action under the city's lobbying ordinance
Thursday, fining the Philadelphia School Partnership $1,500 for an 18-month
delay in registering as a lobbying organization and filing required financial
disclosures. The partnership, a
nonprofit that has raised millions with a goal of improving public, private and
charter schools, signed a settlement agreeing to pay the fine and file reports
outlining its 2012 and 2013 lobbying costs.
BY DAVE DAVIES
MAY 22, 2014
The Philadelphia Board of Ethics has fined the Philadelphia
School Partnership, and education policy group, $1,500 for violating the city's
lobbyist disclosure law. The nonprofit
partnership invests in traditional public, charter and private schools it
regards as innovative, as well as advocating for government policies that give
school administrators more flexibility. Shane
Creamer, ethics board executive director, said the group should have registered
in 2012 under a city law requiring disclosure of lobbying activities. That
year, the partnership spent more than $14,000 on activities including flying
city and school district officials to Denver
to visit a charter school.
City Council now has fallback
plan if Harrisburg
WHYY Newsworks BY TOM
MACDONALD MAY 22, 2014
Philadelphia City Council has added a fallback position to
ensure sales tax money does go to the city's school district. The bill contains enabling legislation to
send an estimated $120 million from a sales tax surcharge to the schools in
perpetuity. Implementing a law passed in the state Legislature last year, it's
a fallback in the event that council can't get a city cigarette tax through Harrisburg , Councilman
Curtis Jones said Thursday. "We're
optimistic that the Pennsylvania Legislature will give us some relief, but at
the end of the day our children will be educated," Jones said. City Council hopes to have the cigarette tax
in place so some of the sales tax revenue could help fill underfunded pension
accounts. The bill modification sends a
message since the schools are requesting the sales tax money ... and more, said
Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez.
"I think it's important that, no matter what, this council is
committed to the $120 million, and I think it's important that we put it on the
table so that we can move to the discussion of the additional $75 million that
is needed, that is expected, from the city of Philadelphia by the [School Reform
Commission]," she said.
School Officials Renew
Their Plea For Funding At City Council
CBS Philly By Pat Loeb
May 21, 2014 6:12 PM
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Philadelphia school officials told city
council, today, the deadline for massive lay-offs is getting close and a
failure to to come up with funding will
mean dire conditions in schools next year.
The district says it needs $216 million just to maintain current
services, which it says are inadequate. Superintendent Bill Hite says if it
doesn’t get the money
in
the next several weeks, it will have to begin making painful cuts. “We are trying not to have to send out over a
thousand lay-off notices. It has irreversible implications for our district and
costs associated with it, separation costs.
in
the next several weeks, it will have to begin making painful cuts. “We are trying not to have to send out over a
thousand lay-off notices. It has irreversible implications for our district and
costs associated with it, separation costs.
Allentown schools approves
Executive Education charter, rejects Arts Academy
By Adam Clark,
Of The Morning Call 11:31 p.m. EDT, May 22, 2014
As the fifth vote in support of the Executive Education
Academy Charter
School
Tweeting the Education News,
Minute by Minute
Education Week Education and the
Media Blog By on May
21, 2014 9:07 PM
Boards of education are supposed
to be the pillars of local representative democracy, bringing high-minded
citizens together to set policies for educating the young. They are often
driven by other goals.
If you cover the Philadelphia Vanderbilt University
Graham, whose Twitter handle is @newskag, said she
started tweeting during meetings of the School Reform Commission (a
state-appointed body that oversees the 72,000-student district) "because I
was really bored." But Twitter
"has dramatically changed the way I cover my beat."
"The way schools are funded — mainly through local real
estate taxes — creates a built-in advantage for schools in rich communities,
where schools can hire the best teachers, build the best labs and buy the best
computers and where the wealthy can surround their children with the children
of other wealthy people. Tracking also
happens within schools, where students are often separated by ability.
“Advanced children are all put together; they all know each other and learn
from each other’s habits,” said Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy of
online education. “At the low end, it’s an intellectual wasteland.”
For Schools, Long Road to a
Level Playing Field
New York Times by Eduardo Porter MAY 20, 2014
In the American national mythology, there are few more revered
ideas than the belief in education’s power to provide every child a shot at
success and to overcome entrenched inequality.
In developing its system of public education, the United States
took care to avoid the European model of providing high-quality education only
to the best, most advantaged students, while generally channeling children from
a working-class background into vocational tracks at an early age. While it often fell short of the ideal, the
United States aimed to provide universal comprehensive education to every
child, creating “an egalitarian system that put the elite systems of Europe to
shame,” the Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz wrote in
their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology.” By the early 20th
century, young Americans were much more educated than their peers in almost
every European country.
Blogger's note: check out the maps showing
the gerrymandered evolution of my congressional district (PA-7) in this article…..
What 60 years of political
gerrymandering looks like
Last week I wrote about the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the United States,
as measured by how geometrically compact they are. I found that districts in
some states are a bit of a hot mess, particularly in North
Carolina and Maryland .
The natural follow-up question: have they always been that way? To answer that, I grabbed historic district
"shapefiles" and did the same geometric analysis for a
handful of states, going back to the 83rd Congress, which convened in 1953. In
nearly every state, the average gerrymander index value -- that is, the average
of the gerrymander scores for all districts in a given state -- has risen
substantially since then.
Restorative Justice: A
Different Approach to Discipline
We Are
Teachers Blog By Deva Dalporto
Suspensions at Bunche High School ,
a continuation school in a high-crime, high-poverty community of Oakland , Calif. Oakland Unified School District Oakland first
introduced the program in 2006 at its Cole Middle School
Paul Jones, superintendent of the Paris
Independent School
District in Texas ,posted a rather unusual letter to
parents on the district’s website. Jones
informed parents that they would soon receive their children’s scores on
state-mandated standardized tests and that they shouldn’t put very much stock
into them. In fact, he told them they were part of a “punitive” system in which
assessments “do not reflect the quality of teaching or learning.” Jones adds his voice to the growing chorus of
educators — teachers, principals and superintendents — who are publicly
protesting the school reform movement uses standardized tests as the main
measure of quality. A Chicago
principal publicly
blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s school reform program, and more protests
are taking place around the country every week.
Here is the letter Jones posted for parents in his district:
“How Public School Funding Works in
Pennsylvania—Or Doesn’t: What You Need to Know” When: Friday, May 30,
2014, 9 am to 12 pm Where: Marriott Hotel in Conshohocken, PA
Session I: "Funding Schools: What Pennsylvania Can Learn from Other States"
Key Pennsylvania legislators and public officials will respond to a presentation by Professor Robert C. Knoeppel of Clemson University, an expert on emerging trends and ideas in public school finance.
Session I: "Funding Schools: What Pennsylvania Can Learn from Other States"
Key Pennsylvania legislators and public officials will respond to a presentation by Professor Robert C. Knoeppel of Clemson University, an expert on emerging trends and ideas in public school finance.
Introduction: Representative Steve Santarsiero
Moderator: Rob Wonderling, President and CEO, GreaterPhiladelphia Chamber of Commerce
Panel:
Charles Zogby, Secretary of the Budget, Commonwealth of PA, Senator Patrick Browne, Senator Anthony Williams, Representative Bernie O'Neill, Representative James Roebuck
Session II: "Why Smart Investments in Public Schools Are Critical toPennsylvania
Moderator: Rob Wonderling, President and CEO, Greater
Panel:
Charles Zogby, Secretary of the Budget, Commonwealth of PA, Senator Patrick Browne, Senator Anthony Williams, Representative Bernie O'Neill, Representative James Roebuck
Session II: "Why Smart Investments in Public Schools Are Critical to
A discussion with a panel of CEOs who are major employers in
the region.
Introduction: Rob Loughery, Chair, Bucks County Commissioners
Panel (confirmed to date):
Michael Pearson, President and CEO, Union Packaging, Philip Rinaldi, CEO, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, Bryan Hancock, Principal, McKinsey & Company, and author: "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools"
You can register for this free event here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-public-school-funding-works-in-pennsylvania-or-doesnt-what-you-need-to-know-tickets-11527064761?ref=ebtnebregn
Introduction: Rob Loughery, Chair, Bucks County Commissioners
Panel (confirmed to date):
Michael Pearson, President and CEO, Union Packaging, Philip Rinaldi, CEO, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, Bryan Hancock, Principal, McKinsey & Company, and author: "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools"
You can register for this free event here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-public-school-funding-works-in-pennsylvania-or-doesnt-what-you-need-to-know-tickets-11527064761?ref=ebtnebregn
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 OF PENNSYLVANIA, DE Co. Campus
Keynote
Speaker: Dan Hardy – Retired Reporter -Philadelphia Inquirer
Distressed Schools: How Did it
Come to This?
PANELS:
- The State of Education in Pennsylvania 60
Years after Brown
- 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 Harrisburg - And - What We Need to be Saying
For
more info and registration: http://www.naacpmediabranch.org/#
Education
Policy and Leadership Center
Click
here to read more about EPLC’s Education Policy Fellowship Program, including:
2014-15 Schedule 2014-15 Application Past Speakers Program Alumni And More
Information
PCCY invites you to get on
the School Spirit Bus to Harrisburg on Tuesday
June 10th for Fair and Full
School
Public Citizens for Children and Youth
On Tuesday June 10th, Public Citizens for Children
and Youth (PCCY) will be going to Harrisburg .
Join committed parents, leaders, and community members from around state to
make it clear to Harrisburg
that PA students need fair and full funding now! We are providing free
transportation to and from Harrisburg
as well as lunch. Please arrive at the United Way Building 1709 Benjamin Franklin Parkway no later
than8:15am. The bus will depart at 8:30am sharp! Reserve your
seat today by emailing us at info@pccy.org or
calling us at 215-563-5848
x11. You can download and share our flyer by clicking here. We hope to see you there!
PA Business-Education Partnership
Featuring:
Welcome By Governor Tom Corbett (invited)
Remarks Acting Secretary of Education Carolyn Dumaresq
(confirmed)
Perceptions & comments of business leaders, educators,
college presidents, and advocacy groups
Full agenda here: http://www.bipac.net/pbc/2014-PA-Education-Summit-Agenda.pdf
Registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/pennsylvania-education-summit-tickets-11529363637?aff=eorgf
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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