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?
The state budget line for
special education funding in Pennsylvania
PA Ed Policy Roundup for July
17, 2014:
Do your
taxpayers know how much your district is spending on cyber charter tuition and
how your district's SPP scores compare with Pennsylvania
A score of 70 is considered passing
Pennsylvania
School Performance Profile Website (2012-2013)
Pennsylvania
Department of Education
21st Century
Cyber CS 66.5
Achievement
House CS 39.7
Agora Cyber
CS 48.3
Aspira
Bilingual Cyber CS 29.0
Commonwealth
Connections Academy CS 54.6
Esperanza
Cyber CS 32.7
PA Learners
Online Regional Cyber CS 45.0
Solomon CS 36.9
Susq-Cyber
CS 46.4
State Rep. Dave Reed (Indiana
Reed Introduces School
Property Tax Reform Plan
Rep. Reed's website 7/15/2014
“For years folks have talked about the need for property tax reform,” Reed added. “This proposal seeks to combine a number of different ideas to bring a realistic solution forward to eliminate school property taxes and significantly increase the state’s commitment to our schools.”
Trib Live By Bill
Zlatos Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 12:27 p.m.
Pittsburgh Public Schools has sent out preliminary furlough notices to 20 teachers and 19 teacher aides, district officials announced Tuesday. The board is expected to take action on the furloughs at its legislative meeting Aug. 27. “It is definitely anticipated the number for both groups could go down, based on attrition and school needs,” said district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh. The district will send final notices to affected employees on Aug. 1. In 2012, the district furloughed 190 teachers and 81 other employees to reduce the district's budget deficits.
Pittsburgh Public Schools has sent out preliminary furlough notices to 20 teachers and 19 teacher aides, district officials announced Tuesday. The board is expected to take action on the furloughs at its legislative meeting Aug. 27. “It is definitely anticipated the number for both groups could go down, based on attrition and school needs,” said district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh. The district will send final notices to affected employees on Aug. 1. In 2012, the district furloughed 190 teachers and 81 other employees to reduce the district's budget deficits.
National Journal calls
Corbett dead man walking
Tom Corbett is a dead man walking. At least that’s what the people at the National Journal think.
The publication has been keeping a careful watch on the
gubernatorial campaigns taking place this year across the nation, and have
named Corbett most likely to lose his job come November.
The National Journal cited a recent Franklin & Marshall College Poll, political
upstart Tom Wolf held a commanding 22-point lead over the GOP incumbent.
‘Vortex of political
hell’ captures Philly’s cigarette tax bill
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent July 15, 2014
An obviously frustrated Nutter told reporters last week he was
tired of watching the legislative ping-pong over a bill that would increase
taxes on cigarettes in Philadelphia
to fund schools.
Top-level departures and
changes in District's central office
the notebook By David
Limm on Jul 16, 2014 03:25 PM
Turnover continues to
strike the ranks of Superintendent William Hite's senior staff at a time when
the District could use some consistency.
Two senior-level staffers in the academic office recently left their
posts at 440 N. Broad St .
The cadre of assistant superintendents has also been hit by departures; five of
the eight positions supervising principals and directing the District's
regional school networks are in transition. On Tuesday, the District released a
spreadsheet showing all its
18,561 employees and their salaries, reflecting its recent personnel moves.
The District's chief of
academic supports, David Hardy, is gone after a short stint as the District's
top administrator in charge of academic instruction. Hardy came last fall from Camden , where he headed
school turnarounds.
In the Office of
Curriculum and Assessment, Hardy's immediate subordinate, Donna Runner, left
the District last month. She now works in a similar position at Charter
School Management Inc. (CSMI), the for-profit charter management firm founded
by wealthy lawyer and influential political donor Vahan Gureghian. In addition, Sophie Bryan, who was Hite's
special assistant and former interim head of the Charter Schools Office, has
become chief of staff to the School Reform Commission. She was previously chief
of staff for SRC Chairman Bill Green, when he was a City Council member.
Technically Philly by
Juliana Reyes Jul. 15, 2014 5:06 pm
It's another release in a series of open data efforts, starting
last April with the District's budget data. "Our hope is that this will
reduce the number of right to know requests around employee data," said a
spokesman. The Philadelphia School District
This is the first time the District has released this data, in
bulk, to the public. Previously, it has released it “piecemeal” to respond to
data requests, said Philip Ichinaga,
the District’s executive director of information technology security. “Our hope is that this will
reduce the number of right to know requests around employee data and allow
people to pull down the dataset as needed from our open data site,” Ichinaga
wrote in an email.
Mars opposes gas well
Post-Gazzette By Sandy
Trozzo July
17, 2014 12:00 AM
A standing-room-only
crowd urged the Mars Area school board Tuesday night to join their fight
against a proposed gas well that would be within one mile of the school
district’s campus.
Although the school
board in March unanimously turned down a Rex Energy request to drill under the
schools, members of the Mars Parent Group want directors to be more involved in
their fight against the well, which is proposed on property in Middlesex owned
by former school board member Kim Geyer.
CHARTER
SCHOOL FAIL
EducationNews Published on Jul 15, 2014 You
Tube runtime 3:57
Mark Naison debunks Charter
School Charter School
19 Ohio
Ex-teachers testify before state education board
By Catherine
Candisky The Columbus Dispatch Wednesday July 16,
2014 6:11 AM
The State Board of Education ordered an immediate investigation
yesterday of a chain of 19 charter schools in response to sweeping allegations
of test cheating, attendance tampering, improper sexual conduct and other
misdeeds. Four former teachers from the Horizon Science
Academy Dayton
High School in Dayton
testified at the board’s monthly meeting in Columbus about years of questionable
behavior, some saying they were afraid to come forward until they found new
jobs.
Tougher High School
Exit Criteria
May Not
Boost College
In an effort to prepare students for college and careers,
nearly all states have toughened their graduation requirements, particularly in
science and mathematics. But their efforts may mean fewer students make it
through high school and to college in the first place, according to a new study
in the journal Education Researcher.
Lead researcher Andrew D. Plunk and his colleagues tracked the
rates of students dropping out of high school, attending college, and
completing a higher degree in states between 1980 and 1999, during the last
rperiod in which states tightened graduation requirements.
Across nearly every racial group, high school dropout rates
increased as states required more math and science courses in order to
graduate. For example, the researchers found dropout rates were nearly 3
percentage points higher for students in states like Pennsylvania ,
Florida , and Louisiana that required a total of six math
and science classes to graduate by 1990, than in states with no
requirements, 11.4 percent versus 8.6 percent.
Trends in state charter
school laws: Authorizers, caps, performance-based closures and virtual schools
Education Commission of
the States By Kathy Christie, Maria Millard, Jennifer Thomsen and Micah Wixom
June 2014
Forty-two states and
the District of Columbia
have enacted charter school legislation. ECS analysts reviewed laws in the 50
states in creating an online database that highlights how state charter school
laws vary, particularly in how states establish standards and accountability
for charter school authorizers, allow for appeals, provide assistance with
start-ups and fund charter schools. Recently,
attention to authorizers — the entities responsible for approving and
overseeing charter schools — has increased. A growing number of states are
establishing standards and reporting requirements that authorizers must adhere
to. Other rapidly evolving policy areas
discussed in this brief are limits or “caps” on the number of charter schools
allowed in a state, automatic performance-based closures and virtual or “cyber”
charter schools.
Teacher tenure: For good
apples, too
We need to be
protected from our principals
Opinion BY ARTHUR
GOLDSTEIN NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS Wednesday, July 16, 2014, 4:30 AM
Every day, it seems, I read about a new lawsuit to do away with
teacher tenure. The crusade reminds me of my friend Harris Lirtzman. It’s
because of tenure that I teach and he doesn’t.
Harry used to be a deputy New York
State controller until, in 2009, he
decided to become a math teacher of special-education students in the Bronx . He offered experience and a depth of understanding
few could match — but his discerning eye proved to be his downfall.
He studied the kids’ Individualized Education Programs, the
documents that state what services special-education students require, and
discovered that many were being underserved, possibly to save on school
expenses. Harry began asking questions —
and learned exactly how unwelcome they were when, in December 2011, he was
denied tenure.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/teacher-tenure-good-apples-article-1.1868064#ixzz37doNwgEq
Yes, Cheetos, Funnel Cake,
and Domino's Are Approved School Lunch Items
And other lessons from my trip to the annual school
nutrition conference.
Mother Jones By Kiera Butler
Wed Jul. 16, 2014 6:00 AM EDT
At exactly 10 a.m. on Monday, hundreds of school cafeteria
professionals ran hooting and clapping down an escalator into an exhibition
hall that looked like a cross between a mall food court and the set of Barney.
Pharrell blared over loudspeakers. The Pillsbury Doughboy was on hand for photo
ops, as was Chester
the Cheetah (the Cheetos mascot) and a dancing corn dog on a stick. Attendees
queued up to be contestants in a quiz show called "Do You Eat Smarter Than
a Fifth-Grader?" and flocked toward trays groaning with every kind of kid
food one could imagine: tater tots, PB&Js with crusts preremoved, toaster
waffles with built-in syrup, and endless variations on the theme of breaded
poultry: chicken tenders, chicken bites, chicken rings, chicken patties, and,
of course, chicken nuggets. I was at the
annual conference of the School Nutrition
Association (SNA), the professional group that represents the nation's
55,000 school food workers, and the biggest draw of the event—the exhibition
hall—had just opened for business. More than 400 vendors vied for the attention
of the conference's 6,500 attendees, who had descended on the Boston Convention
and Exhibition Center
Educational Collaborators Pennsylvania Summit
The Educational Collaborators, in partnership with the Wilson School
District
Pre-K for PA has supporters
all over the greater Philadelphia region who want to help ensure all three and
four year-old children can access quality pre-K.
We need your help -- join an upcoming phone bank. Join
a fun gathering of like minds in Philadelphia and Conshohocken on
Wednesday evenings throughout the summer. We are calling fellow Pre-K for
PA supporters to build local volunteer teams.
Call a Pre-K Friend in Philly:
UnitedWay Building 1709 Ben Franklin Parkway
Wed July 30, 5-7 PM
United
Wed July 30, 5-7 PM
Call a Pre-K Friend in Mont Co:
Anne's House242 Barren
Hill Road
Wed July 30, 5-7pm
Anne's House
Wed July 30, 5-7pm
RSVP: http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/51084/c/10476/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=9390
EPLC Education Issues
Workshop for Legislative Candidates, Campaign Staff, and Interested Voters -
Harrisburg July 31
Register Now! EPLC will again be hosting
an Education Issues Workshop for Legislative Candidates, Campaign Staff,
and Interested Voters. This nonpartisan, one-day program will take place
on Thursday, July 31 in Harrisburg. Space is limited. Click
here to learn more about workshop and to register.
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
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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