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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for
January 24, 2015:
Dworetzky: Approve quality
charters or reject them all? Which is the irresponsible move?
Upcoming Basic Education Funding Commission hearings
scheduled in Mercer County, Montgomery County and Dauphin County
PA
Basic Education Funding Commission website
Thursday, January 29, 2015, 10 am Greenville Junior/Senior High School 9
Donation Road, Greenville , PA 16125
Thursday, February 5, 2015, 10 amMontgomery County ,
location TBA
Thursday, February 26, 2015, 11 amDauphin County
Thursday, February 5, 2015, 10 am
Thursday, February 26, 2015, 11 am
Post Gazette Letter by JANET M. SARDON, Superintendent of Schools Yough School District
January 24, 2015 12:00 AM
On Jan. 21, the Yough school board passed a resolution urging
the General Assembly to establish a new funding formula for basic education.
The Yough School District
Without a basic education funding formula, funds are allocated
according to the wishes of the Legislature, which has resulted in broad and
unfair disparities among schools. The last school funding formula, which was
eliminated in 2011, calculated state aid based on a district’s actual cost,
creating a more level playing field and providing a state commitment to the
total cost of educating our students.
The new system should be transparent, sustainable, equitable
and a long-range plan for public education in Pennsylvania . Anything less is unacceptable
and will continue to put an unnecessary strain on public education that is
detrimental to our schools, our communities and, most important, our students.
Our mission as a school district is to provide all students
with a learning experience in a collaborative and supportive environment. We
believe that a quality education is a shared responsibility among local
communities, the school and the state. Yough School District
Dworetzky: Approve quality
charters for Philly or reject them all? Which is the irresponsible move?
the notebook By Joseph Dworetzky on Jan 23, 2015 01:05 PM
Note: Joseph Dworetzky served as a member of the School
Reform Commission from 2010 to 2014. The opinions expressed here are his own
and are not to be read as the views of Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin &
Schiller, the law firm where he is a shareholder, or of the SRC or the School District of Philadelphia
Last week, I received an email from the Philadelphia School
Partnership expressing outrage over a recent report by Public Citizens for Children and
Youth that recommended the SRC not approve any of the 40 pending charter school
applications. The group said PCCY’s recommendation was deeply flawed. Thirteen of the 40 applicants – representing
13,000 new charter seats -- deserve approval, PSP said. The reason? These 13
schools are being proposed by high-quality charter school operators, with many
of their existing schools serving a similar cohort of low-income students as
District-run schools but receive better school ratings. According to PSP, to
reject these applications wouldn’t just be mistaken, it would be
"outrageous."
After reading the email, I clicked through to a public statement released by an entity called
Philadelphia School Advocacy Partners – an advocacy affiliate created by PSP –
and read a similar analysis. According to PSAP’s spokesperson, Mike Wang,
rejecting these quality applications would be “irresponsible.”
PSP’s email and its sister’s statement move me to several
observations.
Turzai pushes for many new
Phila. charters
KRISTEN A. GRAHAM AND MARTHA WOODALL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS LAST
UPDATED: Thursday, January 22, 2015, 10:43 PM POSTED: Thursday,
January 22, 2015, 6:24 PM
On the same day that the Philadelphia School Reform Commission
was told it could not scrap the teachers' contract to save money, the state
House speaker urged the commission to approve more charter schools. Twenty-seven of the 40 applicants for new
charters "are doing a bang-up job," Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) said
at a roundtable meeting Thursday with parents at Mastery
Charter School 's
Shoemaker campus in West Philadelphia .
Schreiber, Bracey say it's
time to talk with Wolf, others about York
City
WITF Written by Angie Mason, York Daily Record | Jan 23, 2015 8:50 AM
State Rep. Kevin Schreiber and York Mayor Kim Bracey have asked
for a meeting with Gov. Tom Wolf and several state and local education
officials to discuss the York
City School
District
In a letter, shared with the York Daily Record, Schreiber and
Bracey asked to meet with Wolf, his pick for education secretary, Pedro Rivera,
school district Supt. Eric Holmes, Chief Recovery Officer David Meckley and a
York City School Board representative to develop a "forward-looking
plan" for the district.
Schreiber, Bracey advocate
for York City
ERIN
JAMES / The York Dispatch 505-5439 / @ydcity
POSTED: 01/23/2015 05:47:55 PM EST | UPDATED:
ABOUT 13 HOURS AGO0
COMMENTS
State Rep. Kevin Schreiber and York City Mayor Kim Bracey
co-authored the letter sent Thursday to Gov. Tom Wolf, who took office Tuesday. Schreiber and Bracey requested a meeting with
the governor, Wolf's nominee for education secretary, the district's chief
recovery officer David
Meckley, Superintendent Eric Holmes and a school board member
"to develop a forward-looking plan for the future of our school
district." While a meeting has not
yet been scheduled, "We heard very quickly back from the Wolf team,"
Schreiber said.
Forum, rally planned in York
By Candy Woodall |
cwoodall@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
January 22, 2015 at 3:35 PM, updated January 22, 2015 at 3:37 PM
Though a new governor has been sworn into office and can
possibly reverse the previous administration's push for a state takeover of the
York City School District York branch of the NAACP is hosting a forum
at 6 p.m. next Thursday, Jan. 29 at Crispus
Attucks, 605 S. Duke St. ,
York
Blogger's note: Previous articles on the
Philly cheating scandal have cited the odds of erasure patterns being random at
1 in 100 million. By comparison,
published reports cited the odds of random erasure patterns for the Chester
Community Charter School (run by Governor Corbett's largest individual campaign
donor) to be between one in a quadrillion and one in a quintillion. The charter school was "left to investigate
itself".
Former Philly Locke
Elementary principal held for trial on tampering charges
JULIE SHAW, DAILY
NEWS STAFF WRITER SHAWJ@PHILLYNEWS.COM,
215-854-2592 POSTED: Sunday, January 25, 2015, 3:01 AM
A FORMER
Philadelphia School
District Alain Locke
Elementary School Haverford Avenue
near 46th Street
in West Philly from 2009 to 2012, faces charges of forgery, tampering with
public records and related offenses. She
is the fourth principal and eighth educator overall to be charged in connection
with an ongoing probe by the state Attorney General's Office into alleged
cheating on standardized tests.
Too tough? Revised GED test
creates hurdle for many
State reports nearly
90-percent decline in diplomas awarded
In November 2013, the 37-year-old city man started studying for
his GED. He knew a new version of the four-part test was coming out in January
2014, but he decided not to rush things by taking the existing version. He
didn’t think he was ready yet. In March
2014, he passed the social studies component. In May he passed the
reading/writing and science sections. That left math.
Between May and October, Speller failed it four times. The first couple of times, he blamed himself.
Now he’s not so sure.
'EduCon,' an ed-tech
conference without vendors, set to begin
the notebook By Benjamin Herold for Education Week on Jan
23, 2015 11:05 AM
Friday marks the opening of EduCon 2.7, an unorthodox ed-tech
conference that stands apart from other such gatherings because of its approach
(a strident commitment to progressive, inquiry-driven teaching), its location
(a high school, Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy), and especially for
the way it is funded (no vendor sponsorships, product exhibition spaces, or
sales pitches allowed, instark
contrast to other large events in the sector).
"We want this conversation to be about pedagogy and what
that can look like in a modern environment," said Christopher Lehmann, who
founded and leads both EduCon and SLA .
What Lehmann doesn't want to see at EduCon are educators who
think vendors can solve their problems with products. What he does want are
"schools, teachers, parents, and students coming together to define a
vision and figure out what tools are needed to get us there."
Five key questions to ask now
about charter schools
You can tell that National School Choice
Week is nearly upon us — it runs from Jan. 25- 31 — by the number of
announcements coming forth hailing the greatness of school choice.
Jeb Bush’s Florida-based Foundation for Excellence in Education
put out an announcement that it would participate in a march next week in Texas to support school
choice (with one of the speakers being Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush,
Jeb’s son). There’s a new poll by the pro-choice American Federation for
Children showing (I bet you can guess) that most Americans support school
choice. Etc., etc.
There is other school choice news too, but you won’t hear it
from the pro-choice folks. This comes from 10th
Period blog, by Steven Dyer, a lawyer who is the education policy fellow at
Innovation Ohio and who once served as a state representative and was the chief
legislative architect for Ohio’s Evidence Based Model of school funding: In a disturbing new report from
State Auditor David Yost, officials found that at one Ohio charter school, the
state was paying the school to educate about 160 students, yet none, that’s
right, zero, were actually at the school. And that’s just the worst
of a really chilling report, which, if the results are extrapolated across the
life of the Ohio
charter school program, means taxpayers have paid more than $2 billion for kids
to be educated in charter schools who weren’t even there. Here are the
takeaways:
·
Seven of 30 schools had headcounts more than two
standard deviations below the amount the school told the state it had.
·
Nine of 30 schools that had headcounts at least
10% below what the charter told the state it had, though it was less than two
standard deviations.
·
The remaining 14 had headcounts that weren’t off
by as much.
·
However, 27 of 30 schools had fewer students at
the school than they were being paid to educate by the state
This means that more than 1/2 of all the charter schools chosen
at random had significantly fewer students attending their schools than the
state was paying them to educate, while 90% had at least some fewer
amount. So in honor of National School
Choice Week, here are five questions that should be asked about charter
schools, which today enroll about 2.57 million students in more than
6,000 charter schools nationwide. The
questions, and supporting material, come from the Center
for Popular Democracy, which has exposed over $100 million public tax funds
stolen in the charter school industry in a report titled, “Charter
School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.” Here are the center’s questions:
"Once children enter the public school
system—which about 90% of them do—the advantages of living in a well-off
neighbourhood kick in. America
An hereditary meritocracy
The children of the
rich and powerful are increasingly well suited to earning wealth and power
themselves. That’s a problem
The Economist Jan 24th 2015 | WASHINGTON , DC
“MY BIG fear,” says Paul
Ryan, an influential Republican congressman from Wisconsin ,
is that America
is losing sight of the notion that “the condition of your birth does not
determine the outcome of your life.” “Opportunity,” according to Elizabeth
Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts ,
“is slipping away.” Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida , thinks that “each element” of the
sequence that leads to success “is eroding in our country.” “Of course you have
to work hard, of course you have to take responsibility,” says Hillary Clinton,
a former first lady, senator and secretary of state, “but we are making it so
difficult for people who do those things to feel that they are going to achieve
the American dream.” When discussing the chances of ordinary Americans rising
to the top, politicians who agree about little else sound remarkably similar.
Smart, Low-Income Students
Who Shun Good Colleges
High sticker prices
and unfamiliar terminology tend to scare them away, but a potential low-cost
solution simply involves giving them access to better information.
The Atlantic by MAX NISEN JAN 23 2015, 12:00
PM ET
When asked in a research survey why he didn’t apply to a
selective U.S. college, one high-achieving, low-income student showed his
misunderstanding of the commonly used term "liberal arts," which
refers to schools that offer a broad range of arts and sciences:
"I am not liberal," he wrote.
Many bright, economically disadvantaged U.S. students end up at
colleges with poor graduation track records and limited resources—even if they
could attend better institutions and pay less money after receiving financial
aid, according toresearch from
economics professors Caroline Hoxby, of Stanford, and Christopher Avery, of
Harvard. Many of these students neglect to apply to selective schools
altogether, even though such schools often seek diversity in their student
bodies. It’s a waste of academic talent, a contributor to inequality, and a
drag on economic mobility.
New Yorker Reviews Jeb’s
Record on Education: A Must-Read
Diane Ravitch's Blog by dianeravitch
January 23, 2015
The Néw Yorker has a long
article about Jeb Bush's passionate interest in reforming public
education by high-stakes testing, report cards, and privatization. Since his
own children attend private schools, they are not affected by his grand
redesign of public education. To boil
down his approach, regular public schools get loaded down with mandates and
regulations. Charter schools ate free of mandates and regulations, and many are
run for profit. As public schools are squeezed by the competition with
charters, they get larger classes and fewer programs. Meanwhile, Bush's friends
and allies get very rich. It is a
thorough story about Jeb Bush's mission to turn public education into an
industry.. One conclusion: If he were elected President, it would be the end of
public education as we have known it for more than 150 years.
Thorough and Efficient: Pennsylvania
Arguing that our state has failed to ensure that essential
resources are available for all of our public school students to meet state
academic standards.
Register
Now! EPLC 2015 Regional Workshops for School Board Candidates and Others
The Education Policy and Leadership Center, with the
Cooperation of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) and
Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO), will
conduct A Series of Regional Full-Day Workshops for 2015
Pennsylvania School Board Candidates. Incumbents,
non-incumbents, campaign supporters and all interested voters are invited to
participate in these workshops.
Pittsburgh Region Saturday, February 21, 2015 – 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 East Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 East Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Harrisburg Region Saturday, March 7, 2015– 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Pennsylvania School Boards Association Headquarters, 400 Bent Creek Boulevard, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Pennsylvania School Boards Association Headquarters, 400 Bent Creek Boulevard, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Philadelphia Region Saturday, March 14, 2015 – 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, 2 W. Lafayette Street, Norristown, PA 19401
Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, 2 W. Lafayette Street, Norristown, PA 19401
INVITATION:
Twitter Chat on Pennsylvania Basic Education Funding Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 8 p.m.
The first monthly Twitter chat of 2015 with Pennsylvania’s
major education leadership organizations is set for Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 8
p.m. The January chat will focus on a fair, predictable public school
funding formula and the ongoing work of the state’s basic education funding
commission. Use hashtag#PAEdFunding to participate and follow the
conversation.
On the last Tuesday of each month at 8 p.m., the following
organizations go to Twitter to discuss timely topics, ask questions and listen
to the public’s responses:
·
The Pennsylvania Association of School
Administrators (PASA);
·
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association
(PSBA);
·
The Pennsylvania Association of School Business
Officials (PASBO);
·
The Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small
Schools (PARSS); and
·
The Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate
Units
PILCOP: Children with
Emotional Problems: Avoiding the Juvenile Justice System, and What Does Real
Help Look Like?
This session will help you navigate special education in order
to assist children at home not receiving services, those in the foster care
system or those in the juvenile court system. CLE and Act 48 credit is
available. This session is co-sponsored
by the University of Pennsylvania School of Policy and Practice, a Pre-approved
Provider of Continuing Education for Pennsylvania
licensed social workers. Click here to purchase tickets
NPE 2015 Annual Conference – Chicago
January 4, 2015 NPE 2015 Annual Conference, NPE National Conference
Early-bird discounted Registration for the Network for
Public Education’s Second Annual Conference is now available at this address:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/network-for-public-education-2015-annual-conference-tickets-15118560020
These low rates will last for the month of January.
The event is being held at the Drake Hotel in downtown
Chicago, and there is a link on the registration page for special hotel
registration rates. Here are some of the event details.
There will be a welcoming social event 7 pm Friday night,
at or near the Drake Hotel — details coming soon. Featured speakers will be:
§
Jitu Brown, National Director – Journey
for Justice, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Network for Public
Education Board of Directors
§
Tanaisa Brown, High School Senior, with
the Newark Student Union
§
Yong Zhao, Author, “Who’s Afraid of
the Big Bad Dragon?“
§
Diane Ravitch in conversation with
§
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, NEA President and
§
Randi Weingarten, AFT President
§
Karen Lewis, President, Chicago Teachers
Union
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