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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for
January 5, 2015:
Editorial: The shame of
education funding in Pa
"This past year districts in the top
half of average resident income will spend nearly $1,800 more per student than
the poorest half of districts. That represents a 140 percent increase in the
size of the gap –more than $1,000 per student - since the 2010-11 school year."
Delco Times Editorial: The
shame of education funding in Pa.
Delco Times Editorial January 3, 2015
The people of Pennsylvania are
learning something they’ve known for a long time in the William Penn
School District Pennsylvania . And it got a lot worse in the
four years Republican Tom Corbett took up residence in the governor’s mansion. A recent review by the Associated Press
confirmed the sad state of affairs in Pennsylvania
less fortunate school districts. The gap
between what wealthy and poor school districts spend to educate children
widened dramatically under Corbett’s leadership, exacerbated by deep cuts in
aid needed to balance the state budget.
Did you catch our weekend postings?
Corbett
administration's efforts to deny appeal in York PA
"State funding for schools in Pennsylvania
Fact check: Tom Wolf wants
state to pay 50 percent toward public education, but are his numbers on target?
Here's a look at
what it would really mean if the state contributed half of public education
spending.
York Daily Record By
Ed Mahon emahon@ydr.com @edmahonreporter
on Twitter UPDATED: 01/03/2015 12:17:48 PM EST
Democrat Tom Wolf, who was elected governor in November, made
education funding a key part of his campaign. He said the goal should be to get
the state's share to 50 percent. To get
a sense of what it would take to reach that goal, it helps to know the history
of state funding in Pennsylvania
and how much the state provides now. Wolf
and his campaign have tried to frame the issue by citing numbers on education
spending. We are fact-checking two of their statements:
Daily Local Editorial:
Disparity in school funding an important issue in Pa.
An Associated Press analysis of school spending in Pennsylvania has
revealed a key finding that has been explored at length on this Opinion page
over the past few years. The gap between
what wealthy districts and poor districts spend to educate children has widened
dramatically in Pennsylvania .
In the recent AP analysis, the findings showed that the gap more than doubled
in the four years of Gov. Tom Corbett’s term.
But even before Corbett moved into the Governor’s Mansion, we compared
school spending in districts we call the “have-nots,” to those which we call
the “haves.” The differences in income and property value have created wide
disparities in school revenue and spending.
For the have-nots, that translates to less money per student and a
greater tax burden on property owners to provide the most basic education as
required by the state constitution. AP
compared this disparity to other states and found that Pennsylvania is among the worst.
State needs to find formula
for success
Times Tribune Opinion BY
REP. MARK HANNA Published: January 4, 2015
When legislators gather in Harrisburg to begin the 2015-16 session, they
will face a structural budget deficit of well more than $2 billion. This is a point Gov.-elect Tom Wolf has
emphasized as he travels Pennsylvania . The emphasis of this point is not about
laying blame or piling on as some people seem to think. It’s about
acknowledging reality, remembering how we got here, and avoiding the missteps
of the past four years.
Yet for the past week I’ve been reading quotes from Republican
leaders about how they are only willing to work with our new governor if their
failed ideas of the past come first. This seems like a familiar approach, and
one that is not likely to help steer Pennsylvania
out of the ditch it is in and begin to address its educational, economic and
financial needs with new and innovative solutions.
Across Pennsylvania ,
public schools are starved for resources. This is a direct result of the $1
billion Gov. Corbett cut from education, which he never restored. But before we
can begin to restore that funding, we need to lay a strong foundation. We need
an education funding formula that ensures all children receive a quality
education, no matter where they live. We need investments by the state in
buildings, supplies and programs. We need to restore the charter school
reimbursement so districts can afford to provide that option to the parents and
students who want it.
Politics, Fiscal Issues Frame
Pa. School-Aid Debate
In November’s Republican-dominated elections, the Pennsylvania governor’s race was a big outlier, and the
implications for public school spending in the Keystone State Pennsylvania
joins Nevada and Georgia as states with momentum
building to overhaul school funding.
State government revenues
continue late-year uptick in Pennsylvania
Penn Live By Charles Thompson |
cthompson@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on January 02, 2015 at 4:56 PM
In keeping with the recent bullish national economic news, the
Pennsylvania Revenue Department said Friday that for the fourth straight month
state government tax and other revenue collections have exceeded budget
estimates. State general fund revenue
exceeded projections by 6.3 percent in December, good for a monthly surplus of
$161.7 million. For the first half of
the 2014-15 fiscal year, revenues are now $270.7 million over estimates, or 2.1
percent ahead. That does not include an anticipated $80 million transfer of
profits from the state-owned liquor stores that have already been built into
the projections. When held up against
the first half of fiscal 2013-14, the picture is even brighter: year-over-year
revenue growth is a robust 5.6 percent, even after some one-time income sources
are factored out.
2014: The year in York County
Struggle over control of
city school district was prominent all year.
York Daily Record By
Angie Mason amason@ydr.com @angiemason1
on Twitter UPDATED: 01/03/2015 11:55:24 PM EST
As 2014 comes to a close, it's time to look back on the biggest
education stories to hit York
County Charter
Schools USA
MELISSA DRIBBEN, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Sunday, January 4,
2015, 12:03 PM POSTED: Saturday, January 3, 2015, 10:36 PM
David Goldberg, a theoretical cosmologist, physics professor,
and associate dean for research and graduate education at Drexel University
"Some members of the state Legislature
often squawk about teachers union contracts that use seniority rules to protect
veteran teachers from being laid off. The lawmakers argue layoffs should be
based on teacher performance rather than seniority as if somehow veteran
teachers are lazy because they know they are protected from losing their
jobs. But the House operates on its
official seniority rules that mandate caucus leaders appoint plum committee
assignments based on years of elective service, not on smarts, acumen or
private-sector experience."
Politics as Usual
By Steve Esack and Laura Olson Of The Morning Call January
3, 2015
Swearing-in ceremony
for Legislature
The new two-year legislative session officially began Dec. 1.
But the newly elected and re-elected full-time legislators will take the oath
of office Tuesday. The swearing-in
ceremonies for 203 members of the House will kick off at 8:30 a.m. with two
hours of media photo ops and interviews on the House floor. The official
ceremony will start at noon, with the oath of office, speeches, introduction of
caucus leaders and freshmen lawmakers. The Senate, which also will be sworn
into office, will cross the hall to the House for a joint session in which they
must certify the gubernatorial election returns.
"Pennsylvania educators fought the
recent changes, which eliminated the requirement that families submit their
children’s portfolios, as well as the results of standardized testing in third,
fifth and eighth grade, to school district superintendents. The new law also
allows parents to certify that their children have completed high school
graduation requirements and to issue homegrown diplomas without any outside
endorsement.
“Here we are loosening standards for a
subset of students while at the same time giving them the same credential as
all other students,” said Jim Buckheit, executive director of the Pennsylvania
Association of School Administrators. He noted that the home-school law had
been weakened at the same time that public school students were being held to
more rigorous academic standards and teachers were being judged by the
performance of their students."
Home
Schooling: More Pupils, Less Regulation
New York Times By MOTOKO RICH JAN. 4, 2015
“We believe that because parents who make this commitment to
teach their children at home are dedicated and self-motivated, there’s just not
a real need for the state to be involved in overseeing education,” said Dewitt
T. Black III, senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association,
which has close ties to local Christian home-school associations. Mr. Black
wrote an early version of the bill that eventually passed here.
Charter schools debate
continues -- are they about money or education?
By Chris Potter/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette January 4, 2015 12:00 AM
Traditional public schools may feel besieged by public
criticism and hostile politicians. But to hear charter school advocates tell
it, they aren’t alone. “There’s a lot of
noise directed at charters,” said Jonathan Cetel, the executive director of the
research and advocacy group Pennsylvania Campaign for Achievement Now
(PennCAN). “But there are thousands of families on wait lists [to enroll in
charters], and they don’t have a voice.”
Charters have been controversial since state law established them in
1997. While even some staunch defenders of traditional schools acknowledge that
there are successful charters, there have also been underperforming charters
and cases of outright fraud, especially in the Philadelphia area. “It’s not about education, it’s about making
money,” said Ted Kirsch, president of the statewide American Federation of
Teachers.
A+ Schools moves to stronger
advocacy on Pittsburgh
By Chris Potter / Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette January 4, 2015 12:00 AM
Five years ago, Pittsburgh Public Schools educators earned top
marks — and a $40 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation —
for playing well with others. Teachers and administrators had agreed to use
data in improving teacher performance, an agreement Mrs. Gates said was among
those that “have the potential to serve as national models.”
But the debate about using teacher performance — rather
than seniority — to determine which teachers are laid off for financial
reasons can feel like an after-school rumble.
“We’ve been in the national spotlight because our teachers have
said, ‘We want to grow and get better,’” said Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers
president Nina Esposito-Visgitis. “So it’s disappointing that the focus is on
getting rid of teachers.”
Among her disappointments: the increasingly activist role
played by a local education watchdog group, A+ Schools. Carey
Harris, its executive director, makes no apologies for taking a more strident
position than A+ would have held a few years ago.
By Mary Niederberger / Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette January 5, 2015 12:00 AM
A year ago, the Wilkinsburg
school board, with four newly elected members, was just beginning to discover
the depth of the dysfunction in the district.
About the time the board conducted its initial meeting, the state
released the first School Performance Profiles, which showed Wilkinsburg High School
Sound familiar, Pennsylvania
NYT Editorial: The Central
Crisis in New York
New York Times By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JAN. 4,
2015
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s forthcoming State of the State address is
expected to focus on what can be done to improve public education across the
state.
If he is serious about the issue, he will have to move beyond
peripheral concerns and political score-settling with the state teachers’
union, which did not support his re-election, and go to the heart of the
matter. And that means confronting and proposing remedies for the racial and
economic segregation that has gripped the state’s schools, as well as the
inequality in school funding that prevents many poor districts from lifting
their children up to state standards.
These shameful inequities were fully brought to light in 2006,
when the state’s highest court ruled in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York that
the state had not met its constitutional responsibility to ensure adequate
school funding and in particular had shortchanged New York City . A year later, the Legislature and Gov. Eliot
Spitzer adopted a new formula that promised more help for poor districts and
eventually $7 billion per year in added funding. That promise evaporated in the
recession, spawning two lawsuits aimed at forcing the state to honor it.
A lawsuit by a group called New Yorkers for Students’
Educational Rights estimates that, despite increases in recent years, the state
is still about $5.6 billion a year short of its commitment under that formula.
January 23rd–25th, 2015 at The Science Leadership
Academy , Philadelphia
EduCon is both a conversation and a conference.
It is an innovation conference where we can come together, both
in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will
be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the
big dreams.
PSBA Master School Board
Director Recognition: Applications begin in January
PSBA website December 23, 2014
The Master School Board Director (MSBD) Recognition is for
individuals who have demonstrated significant contributions as members of their
governance teams. It is one way PSBA salutes your hard work and exceptional
dedication to ethics and standards, student success and achievement,
professional development, community engagement, communications, stewardship of
resources, and advocacy for public education.
School directors who are consistently dedicated to the
aforementioned characteristics should apply or be encouraged to apply by fellow
school directors. The MSBD Recognition demonstrates your commitment to
excellence and serves to encourage best practices by all school directors.
The application will be posted Jan. 15, 2015,
with a deadline to apply of June 30. Recipients will be notified by the MSBD
Recognition Committee by Aug. 31 and will be honored at the PASA-PSBA School
Leadership Conference in October.
If you are interested in learning more about the MSBD
Recognition, contact Janel
Biery, conference/events coordinator, at (800) 932-0588, ext. 3332.
A recent review by the Associated Press confirmed the sad state of affairs in Pennsylvania less fortunate school districts.
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