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Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA
Ed Policy Roundup April 18, 2016:
EdVotersPA:
End Harrisburg’s School Funding Hunger Games
Rally in Harrisburg with the Campaign for Fair Education Funding
on May 2nd 12:30 Main Rotunda!
Public schools in Pennsylvania are a far cry from the
“thorough and efficient” system of education promised guaranteed under our
state constitution. That’s why we want YOU to join Education Law Center and
members of the Campaign for Fair Education Funding in Harrisburg on May 2nd!
Buses of supporters are leaving from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia - please
register below so we can help you arrive on time for the 12:30 press conference
in the Main Rotunda! Questions? Email smalloy@elc-pa.org
for more details.
End
Harrisburg’s School Funding Hunger Games
Education
Voters PA Opinion Posted on April 14, 2016 by EDVOPA
Over the
past five years, Harrisburg has mastered the art of pitting school districts,
parents, and students against each other in order to draw attention away from
the damage their policies and the lack of adequate state education funding have
inflicted on children, schools, and communities throughout the Commonwealth.
In
the 2015-2016 budget, lawmakers tossed out a handful of crumbs in new state
dollars to school districts desperate for state funding. They then proceeded to
encourage school districts and parents to fight over these crumbs by telling
Pennsylvanians that there would be winners and losers in the 2015-2016 budget,
depending on how this new money was distributed.
Creating
a school funding Hunger Games and manipulating schools districts and parents to
fight against each other for crumbs has been a brilliant political move for
lawmakers who don’t support funding education. So many school
districts and parents have been focused on who gets more and who gets less,
that most have failed to notice that every single school district in
Pennsylvania is a loser with the 2015-2016 budget, no matter how the funding is
distributed.
Superintendent’s
Letter to Lower Merion SD community regarding high-stakes testing
LMSD
Announcements Posted: April 16, 2016
Dear
LMSD Community,
Later this month I will join a cadre of educational leaders from around the state at a Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) stakeholder session focused on re-examining educational policies in the Commonwealth. One of the key topics to be addressed is assessment practices, including the role of statewide standardized tests like the PSSAs and Keystone exams. I am hopeful that this gathering -- the first in a series of workshops and discussions on these issues -- will yield progress in eliminating high-stakes testing from our schools. Over the past few years, parents, educators and elected officials in Lower Merion School District and across the country have consistently voiced their opposition to high-stakes testing for a variety of sound educational and developmental reasons. Weeks of instructional time are lost as a result of testing. Day after day of long testing hours can impact student wellbeing and mental health. Linking teacher performance to test results increases the pressure to emphasize test prep at the expense of more meaningful learning experiences. Perhaps most importantly, many standardized assessments have proven to be of limited use in evaluation and enhancing student achievement.
Later this month I will join a cadre of educational leaders from around the state at a Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) stakeholder session focused on re-examining educational policies in the Commonwealth. One of the key topics to be addressed is assessment practices, including the role of statewide standardized tests like the PSSAs and Keystone exams. I am hopeful that this gathering -- the first in a series of workshops and discussions on these issues -- will yield progress in eliminating high-stakes testing from our schools. Over the past few years, parents, educators and elected officials in Lower Merion School District and across the country have consistently voiced their opposition to high-stakes testing for a variety of sound educational and developmental reasons. Weeks of instructional time are lost as a result of testing. Day after day of long testing hours can impact student wellbeing and mental health. Linking teacher performance to test results increases the pressure to emphasize test prep at the expense of more meaningful learning experiences. Perhaps most importantly, many standardized assessments have proven to be of limited use in evaluation and enhancing student achievement.
West Chester Area
SD Superintendent’s Message to Parents - PSSA Testing
|
Dear
Parents,
The
week of April 11 begins a long stretch of state testing. We begin with the
Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and conclude with Biology
Keystone Exams in late May. I have been very vocal with our legislators and
community about my feelings that there are simply too many standardized tests
and too much pressure put on our students to do well on these exams. For the past two years, our school
performance scores have been among the top 10 in the state (among 500 school
districts.) We know how to help our students achieve high scores on these
tests. But at what cost?
The amount
of time and worry spent on these tests is dizzying. We are stressing out our
students, teachers, administrators, and parents, and I believe it is simply
time to stop and do what we feel is best for our students. This year I asked
our administrators and teachers to focus less on these tests and instead
focus on teaching our district-wide standards for each grade level and
subject, measuring progress in the classroom, and trying to provide a more
relaxed atmosphere as we head into these state-mandated tests.
I
believe our school district’s worth and the value of our students and what
they’re learning should not be measured by a single test on a single day.
Certainly we need tools for evaluation, but our current testing climate is
simply toxic. You won’t find students in the many elite private schools in
our region spending weeks taking standardized tests. Yet our students are
asked to endure that in the quest to measure what they have learned.
|
Wolf discusses Pennsylvania's challenges
during Edinboro visit
By Ron Leonardi 814-870-1680 Erie Times-News April 15, 2016 05:43 AM
EDINBORO
-- Gov. Tom Wolf spent about 20 minutes Thursday evening discussing challenges
that Pennsylvanians and the political system face during his visit to Edinboro
University of Pennsylvania. Wolf,
addressing a capacity crowd of more than 300 in the Frank G. Pogue Student
Center, reiterated his concerns about a looming $2 billion deficit for the
2016-17 fiscal year and a need for increasing education funding. "The big problem is we have to figure
out how we're going to eliminate that gap because we need to fund education,
and we need to fund the human services,'' Wolf said. "If we don't do that,
we're basically going to be taking many of those services away or shifting the
funding to the local level, probably a combination of those two things."
http://www.goerie.com/wolf-discusses-challenges-facing-pennsylvania-during-edinboro-university-visit
Governor to
push for fair school funding
Indiana
Gazette by CHAUNCEY ROSS on April 16,
2016 10:58 AM Indiana, PA
Gov. Tom
Wolf said he will again push for the state to fund Pennsylvania schools in the
fairest way possible in the 2016-17 budget, and said he set aside the proposals
of a commission designed to do just that because the group’s work began on a
poor foundation. In a conference Friday
with the Indiana Gazette editorial board, Wolf said the final 2015-16 budget —
enacted about nine months late — provided less money for Indiana County schools
than the budget he proposed soon after taking office early last year. Still, Wolf said, area schools are getting
more than the previous year. “You are
not going to take a hit,” Wolf said. “This is relative. My budget proposal
would have given Indiana County schools about $1.3 million more than what came
out in this budget. “I was asking for
$400 million more in basic education funding and we ended with $200 million — a
compromise,” Wolf said.
Democrats
stand up for their school districts in opposing Wolf funding plan
WHYY
Newsworks by KEVIN MCCORRY
APRIL 18, 2016
Pennsylvania's
protracted budget negotiation ended nearly a month ago, but the fight continues
over how $150 million in new education spending will be divided amongst the
state's 500 school districts. Gov. Tom
Wolf's plan to restore funding to districts hurt most by past cuts suffered a
major blow last week. And now he faces another critical veto decision. Wolf's "restoration" funding plan prioritizes districts still suffering from
disproportionate funding cuts under his predecessor, Gov. Tom Corbett. Philadelphia, Chester-Upland and Pittsburgh
fare especially well in that plan, and all districts would see an increase, but
the overwhelming majority of districts would get a
bigger boost under the new student-weighted funding formula plan as passed by
the legislature. Wolf vetoed that last
month. Last week, however, lawmakers passed it again within a larger fiscal
code bill — this time with veto-proof majorities in both the House andSenate.
Wolf
painted himself into a corner, approaches early lame-duck status
Trib
Live BY BRAD BUMSTED | Saturday, April 16, 2016,
9:00 p.m.
HARRISBURG
- Pennsylvania's lone-wolf governor overplayed his hand. Legislative votes on a fiscal code bill last
week emerged with veto-proof majorities. It was an ominous sign for Democrat
Gov. Tom Wolf. Democrat lawmakers are
beginning to see that their unswerving loyalty to Wolf last year brought them
little more than a nine-month budget impasse, school districts running out of
money and human services agencies stretched to the max. A fiscal code bill sounds pretty arcane but
it determines how the state can spend money in the state budget. If Wolf
persists in past patterns, he could become the first governor in recent history
to have a veto overridden. It's more significant potentially as a message to
Wolf on the 2016-17 budget. Work on it will get under way in earnest after the
April 26 primary. After last year's
fiasco, lawmakers of both parties are hopeful for a timely, if not early,
budget. It's true Republicans were as
much to blame as Wolf for the impasse, but there were several opportunities for
Wolf to grasp a compromise and settle for a piece — but far from all — of his
complex budget proposal. But he kept insisting on a tax increase. It's equally true that the generally accepted
strategy is for a first-year governor to propose four years' worth of programs
in hopes of getting a chunk at a time when he has the most political capital.
Head of Philly
charter office says non-renewals of four Renaissance charters show oversight is
working
The notebook
by Dale Mezzacappa April 15, 2016 — 6:34pm
The
District's controversial program to turn struggling schools over to charter
operators is robust and being well-evaluated, according to the head of the
charter office. Recent recommendations against renewing four charter schools' contracts prove
that the Renaissance program does not need an overhaul, according
to DawnLynne Kacer. Kacer said in
an interview that the non-renewal recommendations follow the requirements of
the state charter school law. Her office also strictly evaluated the
commitments made by the charter organizations on the goals they would meet for
swift improvement in the historically underperforming District schools, she
said. “I don’t
think this signals anything significant about the Renaissance program’s
strength,” she said. “We defined the number of years that they must produce
outcomes, and if they don’t, they are in violation of their charter, and we can
move forward with other options for students so they can move into
higher-quality seats as quickly as possible.”
Those other options include returning to District control, being turned
over to other charter operators, or going under contract to a provider without
becoming a charter, similar to most of the District’s alternative schools.
She said
she thought the five-year period to show significant improvement
– the term for charters before renewals – was realistic.
“The original state law
that created charters in 1997 hasn't been reformed since. The practical outcome
of the law is that an alternative education system was built as quickly as possible,
with few controls and no extra money to fund or manage it. Since that law was
passed, 176 charter schools educating 120,000 students have opened; 86 in
Philadelphia. And yet, the structure for proper monitoring and oversight is
virtually nonexistent at the state level, and, according to the audit, very
minimal at the local level.”
DN editorial:
State charter-school system could not be any worse
Philly Daily News Editorial Updated: APRIL 15, 2016 — 3:01 AM
EDT
THE
CHARTER-SCHOOL system is supposed to provide quality alternatives to
traditional public schools. Many individual schools do just that. Some don't,
including four schools that the Philadelphia School District announced Thursday
it is not recommending for renewals.
But as a
system, the network of charter schools around the state is structurally
unsound.
This
observation is not new. But a new audit of the oversight of Philadelphia
charters released this week by the auditor general's office illuminates just
how broken the system is, with gaps in oversight and monitoring, as well as
unfair and irresponsible practices from the Pennsylvania Department of
Education.
Agassi's fund
cashes in on N. Phila. charter-school venture
by Jacob Adelman, Inquirer Staff Writer @jacobadelman Updated: APRIL 18, 2016 3:01 AM
Former
tennis pro Andre Agassi's charter-school investment fund is poised to turn a $1
million profit when it sells a North Philadelphia classroom building this week
to the charter operator that has leased it for five years. The sale to KIPP Philadelphia Charter School
is one of the first by Agassi's partnership with the California-based financier
Bobby Turner since they set out in 2011 to deliver attractive returns to
investors with a country-spanning portfolio of charter-school properties. The deal sheds light on a growing niche in
real estate that aims to help charter operators secure space they would
struggle to acquire on their own by appealing to yield-hungry investors, rather
than a more traditional roster of philanthropists and foundations. "If you want to treat a problem, then
philanthropy is fine," Turner said. "But if you want to cure, really
cure, you've got to harness market forces to create sustainable solutions that
are scalable. And that means making money."
“The meetings, which begin on April 28, will be
facilitated by PDE and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the
nonpartisan, national association of state education leaders. Meetings will
include two large stakeholder sessions, as well as the smaller workgroup
meetings. The workgroups will focus on four key areas of ESSA: accountability,
assessment, educator certification, and educator
evaluation.”
Rivera
Outlines Education Department's Process For Developing Pennsylvania's Every
Student Succeeds Act State Plan
Apr 15,
2016, 14:31 ET from Pennsylvania Department of Education
HARRISBURG,
Pa., April 15, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- At a Joint House
and Senate Education Committee hearing this week, Secretary Pedro A.
Rivera provided lawmakers with the Department of Education's (PDE) blueprint
for developing Pennsylvania's plan to implement the federally-approved
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In
addition to providing an overview of ESSA and outlining the department's plan,
Rivera also sought to assure committee members that the General Assembly would
be an important partner in the implementation of the landmark federal law that
replaces No Child Left Behind. "ESSA
provides a once-in-a-decade opportunity to implement thoughtful education
policy that will impact every public school student in the commonwealth,"
Rivera said. "While we await further guidance from the federal government,
the department's vision is to engage diverse stakeholders in a productive,
inclusive, and transparent process to develop our state plan." Rivera said PDE is planning a series of
stakeholder sessions and workgroup meetings to maximize stakeholder engagement
in developing the state plan. Workgroups of 15 to 25 members are being formed
using nominations from state lawmakers, professional associations, and
education leaders around the state in an effort to reflect Pennsylvania's diversity.
Brian O'Neill: Savvy schoolkids show
Harrisburg how to get things done
By Brian
O'Neill / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette April 17, 2016 12:00 AM
The
state budget impasse lasted nearly nine months, coincidentally the length of
the typical pregnancy, but nobody felt like passing out cigars or putting out a
party balloon at the belated birth of our kinda sorta spending plan. Nearly three weeks ago, Gov. Tom Wolf allowed
an appropriations bill to become law by, fittingly enough, not signing it.
There’s a whole lot of not doing in Pennsylvania government. Sometimes I tune
in the Pennsylvania Cable Network because I can’t wait to see what our
oversized Legislature doesn’t do next. This
is the way you don’t want your government to run. So when I heard about 600
high school and middle school students from 26 delegations across the
commonwealth converging on the statehouse last week, I was concerned.
Western
Pennsylvania schools, communities fend off cuts to music programs
Trib
Live BY JODI WEIGAND | Saturday, April 16, 2016,
11:00 p.m.
The
bands play on in Western Pennsylvania public schools despite tighter budgets
and lackluster state funding. School
districts have taken cost-saving measures such as merging arts courses and
finding creative ways to make ends meet, but music programs — among the most
popular in many districts — have remained relatively unscathed by budget cuts. Music educators say community support and
booster groups play a major role in sustaining quality music programs. “People
in the community are able to step back and see the value of these programs
because they see the changes in the students,” said Mark Despotakis, chair of
the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association's Advancement of Music Education
Council.
Western
Pa. schools craft policies to protect transgender students
Trib
Live BY ELIZABETH BEHRMAN | Sunday, April 17, 2016,
10:50 p.m.
Ira
Weiss encourages his clients to be proactive when it comes to transgender
students.
His law
firm represents 14 local school districts, and he is working with each of them
to develop policies to support and accommodate students who were assigned one
gender at birth but identify with the other. Weiss said those policies should
be in place before problems arise, as they have in cities where districts have
been sued for denying transgender students access to certain bathrooms or
locker rooms. “Aside from the legal
consequences, which we all want to avoid, it's a civil rights issue,” said
Weiss of Weiss Burkardt Kramer. “It's protecting individuals and giving them
their rights.” School districts across
Western Pennsylvania are slowly changing their policies to better protect
transgender students from discrimination and bullying. Some, such as North
Hills School District, have updated non-discrimination policies to include
gender identity and expression. Others, such as Southmoreland School District,
will rely on solicitor's advice if there are issues. “It's becoming more widely considered, and I
think districts are advised to deal with it,” said Weiss, whose firm represents
districts including Pittsburgh Public Schools, Sto-Rox, Belle Vernon and
Baldwin-Whitehall.
Commentary:
Those feeling brunt of soda tax will also feel benefits
Philly
Daily News by Marc Steir Updated: APRIL
18, 2016 — 3:01 AM EDT
Marc Stier is the
director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center.
THE SUGARY-DRINK tax proposed by Mayor Kenney, also known as the "soda tax," is controversial because it takes a greater share of the income from poor families than rich ones. And since we at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center are fundamentally committed to economic justice, we are always inclined to be suspicious of taxes that do that. So it may come as a surprise that we have concluded, overall, that the sugary-drink tax proposed by the mayor is a good idea. Though the costs fall more heavily on those with low incomes, for two reasons, more of the benefit of the tax will go to low-income Philadelphians, as well. The first benefit of the tax flows from how the new revenue will be spent - on pre-K education, community schools, and parks and community recreation centers.
THE SUGARY-DRINK tax proposed by Mayor Kenney, also known as the "soda tax," is controversial because it takes a greater share of the income from poor families than rich ones. And since we at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center are fundamentally committed to economic justice, we are always inclined to be suspicious of taxes that do that. So it may come as a surprise that we have concluded, overall, that the sugary-drink tax proposed by the mayor is a good idea. Though the costs fall more heavily on those with low incomes, for two reasons, more of the benefit of the tax will go to low-income Philadelphians, as well. The first benefit of the tax flows from how the new revenue will be spent - on pre-K education, community schools, and parks and community recreation centers.
Ligonier
Valley School District considers 1.8-mill tax increase
Trib
Live BY JEFF HIMLER | Sunday, April 17, 2016, 11:00 p.m.
Ligonier
Valley School District should receive about $295,000 in overdue state
reimbursements for capital projects and a $43,762 increase in its 2015-16
subsidy as a result of legislation approved last week by the General Assembly. The funds might allow Ligonier Valley to
finish the school year in a slightly better financial position than
anticipated. But it won't be enough to
eliminate a projected $1.6 million deficit in the district's 2016-17 budget, a
shortfall that could be addressed, in part, with a proposed 1.8-mill property
tax hike. According to Christine Oldham,
the school district superintendent, administrators are suggesting that the
school board consider the levy — an increase equal to Ligonier Valley's
state-calculated index of 2.4 percent — when it acts on a tentative 2016-17
spending plan next month.
“Salary raises, union and non-union, and the mandatory
increase in PSERS pension payments account for $1.6 million of that $2.5
million increase.
Combine that with a $1.3 million jump in tuition rates —
mostly for charter school enrollments — and you’ve got your spending hike. (The
current budget does not provide $712,000 in charter school tuition
reimbursement that Wolf’s original budget had called for.) In fact, Adams’ analysis showed, even though
the district’s basic education funding goes up under both the Wolf and General
Assembly budgets, decreases in special education and vocational education
funding completely wipe out the windfall, leaving the district with $70,723
less in state education funding than the year before.”
Pottstown
School District would need 3.4% tax hike to balance $59.6M budget
By Evan Brandt,
The Mercury POSTED: 04/16/16,
4:36 PM EDT | UPDATED: 18 HRS AGO
POTTSTOWN
>> Property taxes would need to increase by 3.4 percent to come close to
balancing the $59.6 million 2016-17 school budget, officials were told Thursday
night.
Business
Manager Linda Adams offered a presentation that she said was an attempt to make
local sense of the chaotic budget conditions in Pennsylvania. Just two months before the end of the fiscal
year, it is still unclear which funding formula will ultimately be used to
determine state funding, she said. Adams
said the preliminary budget draft she presented to the school board’s finance
committee Thursday follows the methodology laid out by Gov. Tom Wolf. As The Mercury reported last Sunday, Wolf had
vetoed the fiscal code that accompanied the Republican-crafted budget he
allowed to take effect in March without his signature. He
argued that before the fair education funding formula takes effect, significant
cuts from the term of former Gov. Tom Corbett which hit low-income communities
harder than the rest of the state should be restored.
“The pension fund plays a huge role in the preliminary budget.
Bob Cochran, the district’s business manager, said 25.84 percent of payroll
expense goes toward pension costs, and it will increase to 30 percent shortly.
Using the pension reserve eases the impact to taxpayers, he said. “The retirement rate is the single biggest
increase at $1.8 million,” Cochran said. “Although we are somewhat out of the
woods and the rate of escalation appears to be slowing down in the next year or
two, I don’t think we are truly out of the woods completely. The PSERS (Public
School Employees’ Retirement System) reserve is $2.5 million in an assigned
fund balance, and we are using $191,051 of that to balance this budget.”
Property
owners in Unionville School District face 2.8 percent tax hike
By Fran Maye,
Daily Local News POSTED: 04/16/16,
4:20 PM EDT | UPDATED: 10 HRS AGO
EAST
MARLBOROUGH >> Taxes will be going up for property owners in the
Unionville-Chadds Ford School District by 2.8 percent, according to the 2016-17
preliminary budget unveiled at Monday night’s work session. “This budget maintains our current high level
program and service to students that we expect and are proud to provide,” said
John Sanville, superintendent of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District.
“There are initiatives in this budget that are going directly to the classroom
and our children. It also invests in our students and their future.” Taxes are set to go up 2.8 percent for
property owners in Chester County, and 3.15 percent for property owners in
Delaware County, creating a weighted average increase of 2.88 percent. Although the tax increase exceeds
Pennsylvania’s Act 1 limit of 2.4 percent, district officials are using
$284,000 in exception funds for special education and $191,000 from the pension
reserve fund, negating the need for a referendum on a tax hike. The preliminary budget includes an increase
of $150,000 for the district’s special education program, with the full
budgetary reserve set at $588,941.
Downingtown
School District plans 2016-17 budget without a tax increase
By Ginger Dunbar,
Daily Local News POSTED: 04/15/16,
6:23 PM EDT | UPDATED: 1 DAY AGO
EAST
CALN >> The Downingtown Area School Board approved the 2016-17 proposed
preliminary school district budget without a tax increase, during a meeting on
Wednesday.
The
board members expect to adopt the district’s final budget during the June
school board meeting. If adopted, it will be the fourth consecutive year that
the Downingtown Area School District budget has been approved with no property
tax increase. The unanimous vote
supports the $210.7 million budget which shows a 1.6 percent increase in
expenses over this school year’s budget. District employees said it reflects
the district’s efforts to control costs despite larger increases in areas such
as healthcare and special education costs.
Brown Bag Discussion Series on Community
Schools with the Mayor's Office of Education
Want to
learn more about #CommunitySchools?
Join us for a Brown Bag Discussion with @sgobreski.
Select
one (or more!) *
Tuesday,
April 19 at 4pm
Thursday,
May 5 at 12pm
Thursday,
May 19 at 4pm
Thursday,
June 2 at 12pm
Thursday,
June 16 at 4pm
Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kpIqpThbEApFV292wd_eVWtI7yPO15vqm1R9hMChacg/viewform?c=0&w=1
“Right now, 13 states are
defending themselves in school-funding lawsuits: Arizona, California,
Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.”
Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem
NPR Heard
on Morning Edition April 18, 20165:00 AM ET
Let's
begin with a choice. Say there's a check
in the mail. It's meant to help you run your household. You can use it to keep
the lights on, the water running and food on the table. Would you rather that
check be for $9,794 or $28,639?
It's not
a trick question. It's the story of America's schools in two numbers.
That
$9,794 is how much money the Chicago Ridge School District in Illinois spent
per child in 2013 (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to account for regional cost
differences). It's well below that year's national average of $11,841. Ridge's two elementary campuses and one
middle school sit along Chicago's southern edge. Roughly two-thirds of its
students come from low-income families, and a third are learning English as a
second language. Here,
one nurse commutes between three schools, and the two elementary schools share
an art teacher and a music teacher. They spend the first half of the year at
different schools, then, come January, box up their supplies and swap
classrooms. "We don't have a lot of
the extra things that other districts may have, simply because we can't afford
them," says Ridge Superintendent Kevin Russell. One of those other districts sits less than
an hour north, in Chicago's affluent suburbs, nestled into a warren of
corporate offices: Rondout School, the only campus in Rondout District 72. It has 22 teachers and 145 students, and
spent $28,639 on each one of them.
Teachers talk back: The effect of being
evaluated by student test scores
Washington
Post Answer Sheet By Valerie Strauss April 17 at 12:41 PM
Just about every time you turn around, you can find, somewhere, a
new survey or report or brief or poll that includes “teacher voices.” They are
usually funded by a foundation that has some small or, often, huge investment
in corporate school reform, and the reports somehow find a way to validate some
reform tenets. Here is a new survey that includes the voices of
teachers from an entirely different source — with different results. Anthony Cody, a veteran educator who
co-founded the nonprofit Network for Public Education with education historian
and activist Diane Ravitch, assembled a team of teachers and administrators
from across the country to write a report on the effect of teacher
evaluation systems that require student standardized test scores to be a
factor. The team created a survey and
received nearly 3,000 responses from teachers and administrators in 48
states. Based of the responses, the team wrote a report, titled
“Teachers Talk Back: Educators on the Impact of Teacher Evaluation.” The
report, released this weekend at the national conference of the Network
for Public Education in Raleigh, N.C., finds widespread dismay at how
test-based evaluation systems have affected students, teachers and schools.
“The Broad Foundation plan, and others
like it, funded by groups such as the Walton Family Foundation, are instead
part of a coordinated national effort to decimate public schooling by rigging the
system against neighborhood public schools and the students they serve.”
A Coordinated
National Effort to Decimate Public Schools
Huffington
Post Opinion by Randi
Weingarten President, American Federation of Teachers 04/13/2016 01:43
pm ET | Updated 16 hours ago
Late
last year, after news was leaked about a well-funded plan to convert half of
all public schools in Los Angeles to charters within eight years, the education
community balked. The intentions of the plan’s architect — the Broad Foundation
— were put into stark relief.
It
wasn’t a plan to use charter schools as innovation incubators, as the late AFT
President Albert Shanker and other early charter proponents envisioned them —
schools that would work side by side with neighborhood public schools, sharing
successes and learning from setbacks. Nor was it about charters having a place
in a robust and dynamic public education system offering multiple pathways to
meet individual students’ needs. (These were our goals when, during my tenure
as president of New York City’s AFT local, the United Federation of Teachers,
the UFT and Green Dot Public Schools co-founded University Prep, a charter
school in the South Bronx. Now in our eighth year, 98 percent of students
graduate and almost all go on to college. Many AFT members who work in charter
schools in cities across the country have similar stories.)
“Launched with fanfare and promise, online schools such as
K12 are compiling a spotty record nationwide, but highly motivated students
with strong parental support can succeed in them. In California, however, those
students make up a tiny fraction of K12's enrollment. The result -- according
to an extensive review of complaints, company records, tax filings and state
education data -- is that children and taxpayers are being cheated as the
company takes advantage of a systemic breakdown in oversight by local school
districts and state bureaucrats.
At the same time, K12's heavily marketed school model has
been lucrative, helping the company rake in more than $310 million in state
funding over the past 12 years, as well as enriching sponsoring school
districts, which have little stake in whether the students succeed.”
California
Virtual Academies: Is online charter school network cashing in on failure?
Mercury News By Jessica Calefati, jcalefati@bayareanewsgroup.com
POSTED:
04/17/2016 04:59:01 AM PDT
The TV
ads pitch a new kind of school where the power of the Internet allows gifted
and struggling students alike to "work at the level that's just right for
them" and thrive with one-on-one attention from teachers connecting
through cyberspace. Thousands of California families, supported with hundreds
of millions in state education dollars, have bought in. But the Silicon Valley-influenced endeavor
behind the lofty claims is leading a dubious revolution. The growing network of
online academies, operated by a Virginia company traded on Wall Street called
K12 Inc., is failing key tests used to measure educational success. Fewer than half of the students who enroll in
the online high schools earn diplomas, and almost none of them are qualified to
attend the state's public universities. An
investigation of K12-run charter schools by this newspaper also reveals that
teachers have been asked to inflate attendance and enrollment records used to
determine taxpayer funding.
An Ed
Commissioner’s Confession: How I Tried (and Failed) to Close the Worst School
in Tennessee
The74 by KEVIN HUFFMAN contributors@the74million.org k_huff1 December 6, 2015
Kevin
Huffman served as Tennessee’s education commissioner from 2011-2015, and in
this essay outlines problems he experienced while overseeing the Tennessee
Virtual Academy, operated by K12 Inc. To read K12 Inc.’s full response to this
essay, please click here.
In April
2011, a short while after I became Tennessee’s education commissioner, the
state legislature passed a bill allowing “virtual schools” to open in
Tennessee. The concept was forward-looking: Allow public school districts, at
their discretion, to open and run online schools. These
e-schools could, over time, take advantage of technological advances in
instruction, and they could serve children who couldn’t be served properly by
traditional brick-and- mortar schools. The
bill passed amid a flurry of end-of-session horse trading. Some legislators
expressed concerns about virtual education generally, and others were worried
that the bill included for-profit operators, but as often happens at session’s
end, it chugged along largely under the radar. I was new and not fully looped
in, but my educational philosophy has always been platform-agnostic; I was less
concerned about the kind of school, more concerned about whether the school was
good. From these modest beginnings and
with the help of an unscrupulous operator, an inept school district, and the
generally screwed-up politics of education, the worst-performing school in
Tennessee opened and remains open to this day.
It
remains one of the biggest failures that happened on my watch.
Education
Bloggers Daily Highlights 4/18/2016
Rally in Harrisburg with the Campaign for
Fair Education Funding on May 2nd 12:30 Main Rotunda!
Public
schools in Pennsylvania are a far cry from the “thorough and efficient” system
of education promised guaranteed under our state constitution. That’s why we
want YOU to join Education Law Center and members of the Campaign for Fair
Education Funding in Harrisburg on May 2nd! Buses of supporters are leaving from
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia - please register below so we can help you arrive
on time for the 12:30 press conference in the Main Rotunda! Questions? Email smalloy@elc-pa.org for more details.
Electing PSBA Officers – Applications Due
by April 30th
All
persons seeking nomination for elected positions of the Association shall send
applications to the attention of the chair of the Leadership Development
Committee during the month of April, an Application
for Nomination to be provided by the Association expressing interest
in the office sought. “The Application for nomination shall be marked received
at PSBA Headquarters or mailed first class and postmarked by April 30 to be
considered and timely filed. If said date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or
holiday, then the Application for Nomination shall be considered timely filed
if marked received at PSBA headquarters or mailed and postmarked on the next
business day.” (PSBA
Bylaws, Article IV, Section 5.E.).
Open
positions are:
- 2017 President
Elect (one-year term)
- 2017 Vice
President (one-year term)
- 2017-19 Central Section at
Large Representative – includes Regions 4, 5, 6, 9 and
12 (three-year term)
In
addition to the application form, PSBA Governing
Board Policy 302 asks that all candidates furnish with their
application a recent, print quality photograph and letters of application. The
application form specifies no less than two and no more than four letters of
recommendation, some or all of which preferably should be from school districts
in different PSBA regions as well as from community groups and other sources
that can provide a description of the candidate’s involvement with and
effectiveness in leadership positions. PSBA Governing
Board Policy 108 also outlines the campaign procedures of candidates.
All
terms of office commence January 1 following election.
Join the Pennsylvania Principals Association at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, June 21, 2016, at The
Capitol in Harrisburg, PA, for its second annual Principals' Lobby Day.
Pennsylvania
Principals Association Monday, March 21, 2016 9:31 AM
To register, contact Dr. Joseph Clapper at clapper@paprincipals.org by
Tuesday, June 14, 2016. If you need assistance, we will provide
information about how to contact your legislators to schedule meetings.
Click here for the informational flyer, which includes
important issues to discuss with your legislators.
2016 PA Educational
Leadership Summit July 24-26 State College
Summit Sponsors:
PA Principals Association - PA Association of School Administrators
- PA Association of Middle Level Educators - PA Association of
Supervision and Curriculum Development
The 2016
Educational Leadership Summit, co-sponsored by four leading Pennsylvania education associations,
provides an excellent opportunity for school district administrative teams and
instructional leaders to learn, share and plan together at a quality venue in
"Happy Valley."
Featuring Grant
Lichtman, author of EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education,
Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera (invited), and Dana
Lightman, author of POWER Optimism: Enjoy the Life You Have...
Create the Success You Want, keynote speakers, high quality breakout
sessions, table talks on hot topics and district team planning and job alike
sessions provides practical ideas that can be immediately reviewed and
discussed at the summit before returning back to your district. Register and pay by April 30, 2016 for the
discounted "early bird" registration rate:
Interested in letting our
elected leadership know your thoughts on education funding, a severance tax,
property taxes and the budget?
Governor Tom Wolf,
(717) 787-2500
Speaker of the
House Rep. Mike Turzai, (717) 772-9943
House Majority Leader Rep. Dave Reed, (717) 705-7173
Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Joe Scarnati, (717) 787-7084
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jake Corman, (717) 787-1377
House Majority Leader Rep. Dave Reed, (717) 705-7173
Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Joe Scarnati, (717) 787-7084
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jake Corman, (717) 787-1377
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