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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for
August 22, 2014:
OK Pennsylvania
Think that there has been an
overemphasis on the use of standardized testing? So does the Vermont State
Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability
The adventure
ends: Taney Dragons fall short in 6-5 loss
BY NEWSWORKS STAFF AUGUST 21, 2014
They kept hope alive until the
final pitch, but the Taney Dragons couldn't make magic happen one more time in
the Little League World Series at Williamsport
In game delayed by rain, Philadelphia 's finest Little League team ever lost an
elimination game 6-5 Thursday night to a Chicago
team that will now play for the U.S.
The ride ended sooner than planned
for the Taney players, but their winning ways captured imaginations not just in
their home city but also across the nation, turning middle-schoolers into media
darlings. Star pitcher Mo-ne Davis became the youngest athlete ever to
grace the cover of Sports Illustrated (though now some might add her to the
list of victims of the famous
S.I. jinx).
Even with the defeat, head coach
Alex Rice said this year's Little League experience was the "best summer
of his life."
Tough loss but
Taney still pride of Philly
'Truly a village'
STEPHANIE FARR, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER FARRS@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-854-4225 POSTED: Friday,
August 22, 2014, 3:01 AM
And so he did.
DN Editorial:
Taney's deep bench shows it takes a village
Philly Daily News Editorial
POSTED: Thursday, August 21, 2014, 3:01 AM
WHILE the nation has embraced the
Taney Dragons as an overnight sensation, we know better. This team is really 20
years in the making. It's the result of
efforts by generations of parents and coaches committed to the importance of
teamwork, as opposed to cutthroat competition, and to the idea that anyone who
wants to play can get a chance to play. Even girls.
Video: The PA Basic
Education Funding Commission's first public hearing, held in the Capitol on
August 20.
8/20/14 - Basic Education Funding
Commission: First Public Hearing (runtime 156:19)
Hold-harmless
provision an early point of contention for Basic Education Funding Commission
Capitolwire.com — Under The Dome™Thursday, August 21, 2014
Well, that didn’t take long … In
her opening statements Wednesday, Rep. Donna Oberlander, R-Clarion, told the
Basic Education Funding Commission she would vote against any new formula that
harms rural school districts who “justifiably depend” on state dollars
guaranteed through the hold-harmless provision. It's an opinion she says “a
large contingent” of the House Republican Caucus holds (though no official
caucus-wide position on the issue exists) for one of the major issues to be
considered by the newly-formed commission. However, based on Oberlander’s and
others' statements Wednesday, it seems as though quite a few members of the
Legislature don’t consider it to be a negotiable issue ... something that would
not appear to bode well for the ultimate product of the commission: what many
hope will be a method of funding public school districts that incorporates
uniformity and reason – things the current formula lacks, at least according to
those who testified during the commission’s hearing. For more about Wednesday’s
commission hearing and the hold-harmless matter, CLICK HERE (paywall) to read Capitolwire Staff Writer
Christen Smith’s story.
Senator Folmers' website August 21,
2014
President Kennedy said:
“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long
range risks of comfortable inaction.”
Consider where Pennsylvania
Editorial: Time
running out for Pa.
Delco Times Editorial POSTED: 08/21/14,
10:40 PM EDT |
One year and five months: That’s
how long property tax reform has been stalled in the Pennsylvania Senate
Finance Committee, reports PA Independent, an online news service that covers
state government. Actually, 17 months is
just a drop in the bucket compared to the more than three decades that property
tax reform has been discussed in Pennsylvania
But it’s been during the past year
and a half that the movement has become legitimized within the Legislature. Schuylkill County Republican Sen. David
Argall is a main sponsor of Senate Bill 76, currently stuck in the Senate
Finance Committee. According to the PA
Independent report, Argall acknowledges the bill doesn’t have the support to
get out of committee but he has a strategy to get around that. He told PA Independent he wants to “amend the
legislation into another bill that’s already ready for a floor vote.” “I believe we have the votes we need on the
floor,” Argall said.
In the Philly
'burbs, a battle for control of the state Senate: John L. Micek
By John L. Micek |
jmicek@pennlive.com on August 21, 2014 at 12:46 PM, updated August
21, 2014 at 1:21 PM
The increasingly nasty steel cage
match between Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and Democratic
challenger Tom Wolf might be dominating this summer's political
headlines, but when politics nerds start talking about the races that really matter,
their eyes move down the ballot and east to the Philadelphia
Records show
how often Corbett education adviser Tomalis was in office
By MARK
SCOLFORO, Associated Press POSTED: 08/22/14,
5:42 AM EDT
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The
Pennsylvania Education Department released eight pages of electronic ID card
records Thursday that indicate embattled former secretary Ron Tomalis was at
its Harrisburg headquarters for 126 days this year. The record of card activity was produced more
than three weeks after Tomalis’ schedule and work activity were questioned in a
story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and about a week after Tomalis quit as a
special adviser on higher education. “We
expect that this information puts this issue to rest so that the department can
continue to focus on the education of Pennsylvania
Tomalis showed
up for work, wasn't ghost employee, Folmer says: Thursday Morning Coffee
By John L. Micek |
jmicek@pennlive.com on August 21, 2014 at 8:30 AM, updated August
21, 2014 at 8:38 AM
Good Thursday Morning, Fellow
Seekers.
Just when you think it's going to die down, the ongoing kerfuffle over whether ex-Corbett administration adviser Ron Tomalis did the work to justify his $140k salary finds new wind for its sails. On Wednesday, Senate Education Committee Chairman Mike Folmer said state Department of Education officials showed him documentation that indicates Tomalis was not a ghost employee, as political opponents of RepublicanGov. Tom Corbett assert.
Just when you think it's going to die down, the ongoing kerfuffle over whether ex-Corbett administration adviser Ron Tomalis did the work to justify his $140k salary finds new wind for its sails. On Wednesday, Senate Education Committee Chairman Mike Folmer said state Department of Education officials showed him documentation that indicates Tomalis was not a ghost employee, as political opponents of RepublicanGov. Tom Corbett assert.
Folmer, R-Lebanon, tells The
Tribune-Review that the "the agency produced a record
of Tomalis' electronic “swipes” to enter the state parking garage,
and those records show “he was there.” “I'm
telling you, he was not a ghost employee,” Folmer tells the
newspaper..
PA-Gov:
Corbett Never Met with Tomalis During Year as Advisor
PoliticsPA
Written by Nick Field, Managing Editor August 21, 2014
Governor Corbett held no meetings
with Ron Tomalis during his time as special adviser on higher education,
government records show. According
to Brad
Bumsted of the Tribune-Review, copies of the Governor’s official calendar
show no meetings between Gov. Corbett and Tomalis between May 15, 2013 (the
day Tomalis stepped down as Education Secretary) and mid-July 2014. Tomalis, who
resigned last week, has seen his tenure increasingly questioned since
a Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette report revealed the staffer appeared to have an
exceptionally light workload.
Woes of Philly
schools can't be overstated, Hughes declares
WHYY Newsworks BY KEVIN MCCORRY AUGUST 21, 2014
It's all been written before. The Philadelphia School District
Overfilled classrooms. Guidance counselors and nurses nonexistent in
schools on many days.
Cash available only for the barest
of supplies and supports.
Still, "it needs to be
discussed over and over and over again," said Pennsylvania Sen. Vincent
Hughes at a Thursday news conference. "This is not how you achieve a 21st
century education."
Flanked by a teacher, a parent, a
student, a building maintenance worker and colleague state Sen. Larry Farnese,
Hughes detailed the results of his 2013-2014 school district fact-finding
study.
Dozens more
Philly schools lose school police due to budget cuts
WHYY Newsworks BY KEVIN MCCORRY AUGUST 21, 2014
In a move that leaders hope will be
temporary, the Philadelphia
School District
“I can’t think of a smarter investment than
making it in early learning Pre-K education for our children and that type of
investment just reaps so many benefits in the long-run,” Loughery said after
reading to the kids.
Bucks County Courier
“My mom has a garden and grows tomatoes,” one
student said. “I have tomatoes,” another said. “I don’t,” said another. Bucks
County
Loughery then read to about 20
campers at Emilie Christian Day School’s summer camp in Bristol Township, all
of whom are about to start kindergarten this year. Commissioner Diane Marseglia
also read to students earlier that day. The reading was part of a state-wide
campaign by Pre-K for PA, a nonpartisan group that advocates for more funding
for high-quality preschool programs.
Common Core
standards draw criticism in Pennsylvania
Johnstown Tribune-Democrat By John
Finnerty jfinnerty@cnhi.com August
20, 2014 11:38 pm
“I don’t think they got input from
the appropriate people,” Keller said, adding that means teachers and parents.
"The Allentown
School District launched
an investigation into the Arts Academy due to its hiring of a political
lobbying firm to enroll students and demonstrate community support, which under
state law is required of a charter application.
The firm was paid about $30 per student. Abraham
Atiyeh, landlord of the former racquetball club, said hiring consultants is
a normal process for charter applications and defended it as legal and ethical.
Allentown school officials and board
members have
often cited the loss of students to charter schools as one of the
biggest drains in their troubled budgetary situation, in which 98 positions
were cut this year. By late May, the
district had lost $19.7 million in charter tuition for the 2013-14 school year,
and they expect to lose at least $7 million more this year from the new openings
of the Roberto
Clemente elementary school and Executive
Education Academy Charter School."
Rejected Allentown
By Colin
McEvoy | The Express-Times on August 21, 2014 at 8:48 PM
More than 150 people gathered
at Allentown's
America on Wheels Museum
The seventh-grader with the Arts
Academy Elementary Charter School stepped up to the microphone
and, with a voice much bigger than her body, sang a rendition of "The Girl
in 14-G," a song best known from Broadway veteran Kristin Chenoweth.
"Seventh grade!" Arts Academy
Students like her are why Arts Academy
WNEP POSTED 4:55 PM, AUGUST 20, 2014,
BY JACKIE DE TORE
Charging
nonprofits could be key to Harrisburg
School District
PennLive.com
BY KASEY VARNER | Special to PennLive on August 19, 2014 at 9:30 AM
In light of a collaboration between
the Harrisburg School Board and city officials about a proposed tax abatement
program, school board Vice President James Thompson hailed a payment in lieu of
taxes program as a possible – and perhaps even a greater – method of generating
new revenue. Thompson reviewed the
progress of the board's discussions with city officials regarding the proposed
tax abatement program during Monday night's school board meeting.
"There are a lot of things to
consider. We all agreed that we would put our heads together with the city in a
cooperative way to go through a consideration of a tax abatement program,"
Thompson said.
By Christine Vendel |
cvendel@pennlive.com on August 18, 2014 at 4:00 PM,
updated August 19, 2014 at 11:48 AM
With an estimated budget surplus of
$9.4 million in its last fiscal year, the Harrisburg School District
The district and its Chief Recovery
Officer Gene Veno plan to address employee absenteeism, investigate
property tax collections and review contracts and procedures for efficiencies,
according to Veno's quarterly status report that will be presented at Monday
night's school board meeting. Veno won't be at the meeting, however, as he is
out of state on unrelated business.
The report comes three months after
a recalibration of the district's recovery plan, which was initially approved
by the state in May 2013. Prior to the plan, the district was headed into
insolvency.
Study shows
Haverford schools getting return on investment
Delco
Times By LOIS PUGLIONESI, Times Correspondent POSTED: 08/21/14,
11:28 PM EDT |
HAVERFORD — Local taxpayers are
getting plenty of education bang for their buck, according to a recent study
titled “Return on Educational Investment: 2014” by Ulrich Boser of the Center
for American Progress. School Director
Phil Hopkins called attention to the study at a recent school board meeting,
noting that Haverford
School District
To receive the highest ranking,
districts had to place among the top 30 on state reading and math assessments,
and among the bottom 30 for spending, Hopkins
Wiretaps in
Trombetta case weren’t illegal, prosecutors say
By Rich Lord / Pittsburgh
When federal investigators recorded
conversations between Pennsylvania
Cyber Charter
School
The brief by prosecutors at U.S.
Attorney David Hickton’s office seeks to counter a motion filed by Mr.
Trombetta's legal team in June in which the defense sought dismissal of the
year-old indictment against him, or suppression of key evidence. Mr.
Trombetta's defense lawyers wrote then that prosecutors wrongly recorded,
through wiretaps and informants wearing devices, conversations between Mr.
Trombetta and attorneys.
Prosecutors
rebuff Trombetta's misconduct accusations
Beaver County TImes Online By J.D.
Prose jprose@timesonline.com | Posted 13 hours ago
Trombetta, who faces 11 criminal
charges, including mail fraud and filing false tax returns, accused the
government of illegally recording privileged attorney-client conversations and
using that information to obtain search warrants and, ultimately, an indictment.
In their response, prosecutors said
Trombetta -- an Aliquippa native and East Liverpool, Ohio, resident -- did not
have attorney-client relationships with attorneys Joe Askar, the Beaver County
solicitor and an attorney for the Trombetta-created and Rochester-based
National Network of Digital Schools; former PA Cyber attorney Timothy Barr; and
Ralph Monico and Leo Daly, attorneys from the Pittsburgh firm Grogan &
Graffam, who also represented NNDS.
New Research
Organization Will Focus on Philadelphia
Education Week District Dossier
Blog By Denisa R.
Superville on August 20, 2014 10:10 AM
The announcement comes at a time
when the city's public schools are slashing
programs and staff to deal with steep budget cuts—and with no permanent
solution to curtail a structural deficit.
The
Philadelphia Education Research Consortium—or PERC— will be similar in
scope and mission to other research organizations in large cities, such as
the Consortium on Chicago School
Research, which focuses on that city's schools; the Baltimore Education Research Consortium;
and the Research
Alliance for New York City Schools.
The directors of the three
established organizations will provide strategic guidance to the new Philadelphia
EducationSecretary
Duncan: Too much focus on testing
By Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers
President Nina Esposito-Visgitis has heard the complaints about standardized
testing across the country, just not from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. In a blog post Thursday, Mr. Duncan
said, “I believe testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the
room in a lot of schools …” On Mr. Duncan’s
watch, standardized tests have become increasingly important in schools. To
apply for federal Race to the Top grants, states had to pledge to use student
performance in teacher evaluation.
Now Mr. Duncan says the federal
department will allow states to apply to delay the use of student test scores
in teacher evaluation by one year.
U.S. Ed. Sec.
Duncan: Too Much Testing Costs Teachers and Students 'Precious Time'
Education Week Curriculum Matters
Blog By Catherine
Gewertz on August 21, 2014 4:46 PM
What was intriguing about U.S.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan's announcement Thursday was what he didn't
announce. You've probably heard by now
that Duncan
But if you look at Duncan
"... in many places, the sheer
quantity of testing—and test prep—has become an issue," he says. "In
some schools and districts, over time tests have simply been layered on top of
one another, without a clear sense of strategy or direction. Where tests are
redundant, or not sufficiently helpful for instruction, they cost precious time
that teachers and kids can't afford. Too much testing can rob school buildings
of joy, and cause unnecessary stress. This issue is a priority for us, and
we'll continue to work throughout the fall on efforts to cut back on
over-testing."
Judge finds
voucher program unconstitutional; NC attorney general plans to appeal
News Observer BY ANNE BLYTHE AND
JANE STANCILL August 21, 2014
A diverse group, including
teachers, parents, a former state school superintendent and many of North Carolina N.C. Justice Center Chatham ,
Durham and Orange
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/21/4086127_judge-finds-nc-voucher-program.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy
NC "Opportunity Scholarship Program" school vouchers
ruled unconstitutional; state must retrieve distributed funds
NC Policy Watch Posted on 8/21/2014 by Sharon McCloskey
and Lindsay Wagner
In a stunning rebuke to state
lawmakers’ efforts to bring school vouchers to North Carolina North Carolina
Judge Rules
Voucher Program in North Carolina
North Carolina Superior Court Judge
Robert Hobgood has ruled that the state's school voucher program is unconstitutional because "appropriating
taxpayer funds to unaccountable schools does not accomplish a public
purpose," WRAL reported Aug. 21.
Hobgood ruled against the
state's Opportunity Scholarship program, which was passed
into law in 2013. The program provides up to $4,200 in private school
scholarship funds to each student. To be eligible for these scholarships,
students must qualify for free or reduced-price meal programs based on their
household income levels. The scholarships were slated to be introduced to the
2014-15 school year for students who had attended public schools in the state
during the prior academic year, although eligibility requirements change in
2015-16. Lawmakers appropriated $10 million for the scholarships during the
2014-15 school year. UPDATE: The legislature appropriated an additional $840,000 for the
program in the budget approved earlier this month.
On September 17, 2014 the Education
Law Center will hold its annual event at the Crystal Tea Room in the Wanamaker
Building to celebrate Pennsylvania’s Education Champions. This year, the event
will honor William P. Fedullo, Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association;
Dr. Joan Duvall-Flynn, Education Committee Chair for the Pennsylvania State
Conference of NAACP Branches; and the Stoneleigh Foundation, a Philadelphia
regional leader on at-risk youth issues.
Pennsylvania Arts Education
Network 2014 Arts and Education Symposium
The 2014 Arts and Education Symposium will be
held on Thursday, October 2 at the State Museum
of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, PA. Join us for a daylong convening of
arts education policy leaders and practitioners for lively discussions about
the latest news from the field.
The Symposium registration fee is $45 per person.
To register, click
here or follow the prompts at the bottom of the page. The Symposium will include the following:
Register Now – 2014 PAESSP State
Please join us for the 2014 PAESSP State Conference, “PRINCIPAL
EFFECTIVENESS: Leading Schools in a New Age of Accountability,” to be
held October 19-21 at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel, Pittsburgh , Pa.
PSBA Website
Make plans today to attend the most talked about education
conference of the year. This year's PASA-PSBA
School Leadership Conference promises to be one of the best with new
ideas, innovations, networking opportunities and dynamic speakers. More details
are being added every day. Online registration will be available in the
next few weeks. If you just can't wait, registration
forms are available online now. Other important links are available
with more details on:
·
Hotel
registration (reservation deadline extended to Sept. 26)
·
Educational
Publications Contest (deadline Aug. 6)
·
Student
Celebration Showcase (deadline Sept. 19)
·
Poster
and Essay Contest (deadline Sept. 19)
Slate of candidates for PSBA
offices now available online -- bios/videos now live
PSBA Website August 5, 2014
PSBA Website August 5, 2014
The slate of candidates for 2015 PSBA officer and at-large
representatives is now available online.
Photos, bios and videos also have been posted for each candidate.
According to recent PSBA Bylaws changes, each member school entity casts one
vote per office. Voting will again take place online through a secure,
third-party website -- Simply Voting. Voting will openSept. 9 and
closes Oct. 6. One person from the school entity (usually the board
secretary) is authorized to cast the vote on behalf of the member school entity
and each board will need to put on its agenda discussion and voting at one
of its meetings in September. Each person authorized to cast the school
entity's votes will be receiving an email in the coming weeks to verify the
email address and confirm they are the person to cast the vote on behalf of
their school entity.
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