Daily postings from the Keystone State Education Coalition now
reach more than 3900 Pennsylvania education policymakers – school directors,
administrators, legislators, legislative and congressional staffers, Governor's
staff, current/former PA Secretaries of Education, Wolf education transition
team members, Superintendents, PTO/PTA officers, parent advocates, teacher
leaders, business leaders, faith-based organizations, labor organizations,
education professors, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 regulatory
agencies, professional associations and education advocacy organizations via
emails, website, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
These daily emails are archived and searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg
Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA
Ed Policy Roundup April 28, 2016:
“We need to fund the formula”
Rally in Harrisburg with the Campaign for Fair Education Funding
on May 2nd 12:30 Main Rotunda!
We're rallying for a permanent fair funding formula + increases to basic
education in 2016-17 budget
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.
“But the formula is only as good as its funding, the
advocates stressed, saying schools across the state are underfunded annually by
more than $3 billion.
"We need to fund the formula," said lawyer
Deborah Gordon Klehr of the Education Law Center. "Pennsylvania has the largest funding
gap between wealthiest and poorest schools in the country, according to the
U.S. Department of Education. So a formula is only as good as the funding that
goes through it."
School
advocates to state: Add cash to new funding formula
by Mensah M. Dean, Staff Writer Updated: APRIL 28, 2016 — 1:08
AM EDT
Buoyed
by the end of the state budget stalemate and the creation of a new school
funding formula this month, Philadelphia education advocates on Wednesday
called on the state legislature to pump $400 million in new money into 2016-17
school budgets. If the request becomes
reality, the city School District would receive 18.9 percent, or about $75
million, of that new funding, said the advocates, who held a news conference in
front of the district's North Broad Street headquarters. The school funding formula, used to determine
how much money each district receives from the state, is laudable for
allocating funding based on the number of students in each district weighted
for factors such as the number of students who are poor, who are learning
English, and who have newly enrolled in charter schools, advocates say.
"The problem is that it is only as good as the money
it applies to, and it only applies to the new money. There is a lot of
locked-in inequity, and until the state starts to put sufficient dollars in, it
isn't going to fix the problems that Pennsylvania has."
Fair-funding
advocates praise new formula, but stress the need for more money
The notebook
by Dale Mezzacappa April 27, 2016 — 7:56pm
A group
of advocates Wednesday called on the General Assembly to increase
state education funding next year by $400 million. That is the amount proposed by Gov. Wolf in
his budget, but it is likely to get pushback from a Republican legislature
that has been loath to raise taxes.
The Coalition for Fair Education Funding praised the legislature's
adoption of a state education funding formula in the fiscal code, after
five years without a predictable way for distributing education aid. But
they declared that this was just a first step in bringing resource equity
and adequacy to the state's 500 school districts. "We have to recognize, as the American
poet Jerry Garcia observed once, 'every silver lining has a touch of
gray,'" said Jeff Garis of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center.
"The funding formula that we have, while it is great, ultimately is only
going to be as effective as the funding that is put into it." The advocates plan to descend on
Harrisburg on Monday, May 2, the first day of business after Tuesday's
primary.
Analysis of 2015 School Funding Impact
Plans: The Graveyard of a Lost Year of Pennsylvania Education
Public
Interest Law Center of Philadelphia By Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, Staff Attorney,
and James Rathz, David Peters and Maura Douglas, Legal Interns.
An
analysis of plans submitted by Pennsylvania school districts last spring, which
reported how they would use new state education funding, provides vivid proof
of how persistent underfunding has damaged the ability of districts to provide
even the essentials of a good education. It is a window into the consequences
for students of the failure to carry through on the legislature’s 2008 plan to
provide schools with the resources necessary to keep pace with demanding new
standards. Although the state
temporarily made meaningful strides to fix its inadequate and unfair funding,
progress was reversed in 2011, when the Commonwealth cut education funding by
$860 million. The impact from that cut was as foreseeable as it was widespread:
Districts eliminated 27,000 jobs and class sizes increased, while test scores
and the percentage of high school graduates enrolling in college immediately
declined. Moreover, those cuts continue to reverberate five years later, with
most districts—particularly the poorest districts—still with less state
funding than before the cuts.
NEWS RELEASE: PSBA releases
recommendations for ESSA implementation in Pennsylvania
An Every
Student Succeeds Act Study Group (ESSA), convened by the Pennsylvania School
Boards Association (PSBA), has released recommendations on how the new ESSA
should be implemented in the commonwealth. ESSA was signed into law in December
2015 and replaces the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). A report with
recommendations was developed by a diverse group of more than 80 school
directors, school administrators and subject experts. All
states, including Pennsylvania, are now in the process of crafting new state
plans that are expected to be submitted for approval to the U.S. Department of
Education in Fall 2016 and take effect beginning in 2017-18. “We are pleased to make these recommendations
on behalf of the participants of the study group,” said PSBA Executive Director
Nathan Mains. “The study group, all education experts, had very thoughtful and
probing conversation around ESSA implementation. We strongly encourage the
Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) to take these recommendations into
consideration as it moves forward with the state’s plan.”
The ESSA
has been heralded by many for returning accountability to the states. These
changes mean that individual states will bear more responsibility for
implementing the law and its new requirements. PSBA convened the study group to
begin the process of making recommendations to PDE, Gov. Tom Wolf and the
General Assembly. The report is the
result of several weeks of discussion and preparation by study group members,
culminating in a two-day meeting held March 2-3, 2016, during which attendees
reviewed and discussed the new law in subgroups from four perspectives:
assessment, schools identified as being in the “bottom 5%,” educator effectiveness,
and charter school issues and solutions.
Within these topics, subgroups developed key areas of recommendations. The full list of recommendations and details for each can be found
in the full report online. The goal of the study group
and PSBA is that the recommendations will be taken into consideration as PDE
begins convening its own study groups on April 28. Highlights from each group
are listed below:
PlanCon: Reforming
the cost of Pa. education (column)
York Daily Record by Rep. Kristin Phillips-Hill,
Guest Columnist1:34 p.m. EDT April 26, 2016
Rep.
Kristin Phillips-Hill is a Republican from York Township.
Throughout
the ongoing budget debate, you may have seen and heard the acronym PlanCon used
in reference to education spending. PlanCon is short for Planning and
Construction Workbook, a system by which Pennsylvania’s school districts and
career and technology centers are reimbursed by the commonwealth for costs
incurred during construction. Some of
you may question the idea of reimbursing schools for construction costs. I’d
like to offer some background on the subject.
The commonwealth reimbursing schools in this manner has been going on
for quite some time. The origin dates back to the 1950s; however, the modern
day PlanCon process is the result of Act 34 of 1973. This legislation placed in
statute the process for applying for reimbursement, as well as standards school
districts must adhere to in order to be reimbursed. Why do we choose to reimburse districts?
PlanCon is a way to allow poor rural school districts to afford construction;
however, all districts were eventually allowed to participate in the program.
The General Assembly also believes it is in the best interest of the total
education product to offer some sort of incentive, as well as have some control
over the landscape. It is important to point out not all construction costs are
eligible for reimbursement. The portion being reimbursed must serve an educational
purpose.
Poll: Should
charter schools be funded by local school tax?
By Jim Flagg |
For lehighvalleylive.com Email the author on April 26, 2016 at
2:24 PM, updated April 26, 2016 at 2:29 PM
"Without
the charter schools, we'd have a surplus," Bethlehem School
Superintendent Joseph Roy said
Monday, attributing a proposed
3.9 percent district tax increase to charter school tuition and
contributions to employee pension funds.
Roy's complaint is far from unique. Many school officials lament having
to pay for students to go to charter schools, whose tuition is paid by school
district taxes without a significant bump in state aid for that expense. For
2016-17, the Bethlehem Area School District will send $26 million to charter
schools and nearly $30 million to pension funds. Charter schools — tax-supported entities that
operate independently of most state mandates — are thriving in Pennsylvania. In
the 2013-14 school year, state taxpayers spent $1.2 billion to support 129,000
students in both bricks-and-mortar and cyber charter schools.
It's time for
a blue-ribbon commission to fix Pa's budget mess: George Wolff
PennLive Op-Ed By George Wolff on April 27, 2016 at
12:11 PM
George Wolff is founder of the
Keystone Transportation Funding Coalition.
Although
hard to imagine in today's climate of fiscal austerity, 20 years ago the
commonwealth was rolling in cash. Even
though we never used the term, the state was running "structural
surpluses" – taxes and other revenue exceeded expenses by hundreds of
millions of dollars a year. The
state's two primary pension funds – the Public School Employees Retirement
System and the State Employees Retirement System – were well funded with annual
returns on investments in the double digits.
Even after fully funding state programs, setting aside hundreds of
millions to encourage economic development, investing billions in sports
stadiums and convention centers and cutting business taxes by hundreds of
millions of dollars, we were still comfortably in the black. If anyone knew a dot-com bubble was going to
burst or the home mortgage market was going to collapse, they weren't telling
anyone – yet. In the glow of those
comfortable surpluses, our elected leaders made a series of fateful moves. The state's elected officials have seen this
coming for years, but have failed to come to a consensus to fix it.
They
determined that they could drastically reduce the commonwealth's and school
districts' contributions to the pension funds, while giving the participants in
those funds – including themselves – significant benefit increases. For a couple of years, the state and school
districts paid virtually nothing into the pension funds while benefits were
being increased by 25 to 50 percent.
West Jefferson Hills School Board balances
preliminary budget with tax hike
Post Gazette
By Margaret Smykla April 28, 2016 12:45 AM
A
balanced preliminary budget of $47.7 million for the 2016-17 school year that
raises taxes for the fourth consecutive year was introduced at Wednesday’s
meeting of the West Jefferson Hills School Board. There are no furloughs or
program cuts in the plan. The
preliminary budget calls for a real estate tax hike of 0.59 mills, for a new
tax rate of 19.628 mills. The increase will generate an additional $806,000 for
the district. The owner of a home
appraised at $100,000 will pay $59 more in real estate taxes next year. Last year, the millage was raised 0.446
mills. For the 2014-15 school year, it was raised 0.488 mills, and for 2013-14
it was raised 0.39 mills.
Voters reject
Riverside SD, Carbondale referendums
Times Tribune BY PETER CAMERON, STAFF WRITER Published:
April 27, 2016
Voters
in the Riverside School District stomped a referendum that would have allowed a
tax increase of more than 8 percent to raise money for a district with a
“dangerously low” rainy-day fund. More
than 90 percent of ballots cast — representing 3,370 voters — were against the
tax increase, while 308 were in favor, according to unofficial results. Registered voters in Moosic and Taylor, the
two boroughs served by the district, were asked to hike school district real
estate taxes by an additional 4.47 mills, or 3.93 percent. A mill is equal to
$1 in tax for every $1,000 of assessed property value. A “yes” outcome could have resulted in an
increase of as much as 8.93 mills, or 8.16 percent, during the 2016-17 school
year. The state Department of Education
already approved the district’s application to increase taxes over a
predetermined cap, known as the Act 1 Index, giving the school board the
ability to enact a 4.46-mill hike regardless of what voters decide. Superintendent Paul M. Brennan previously
called the referendum a “desperation move” from the school district because it
has a “dangerously low” rainy-day fund and health insurance reserve.
South Western
to tentatively adopt school budget
York Daily Record Staff report 6:15
p.m. EDT April 20, 2016
South
Western School District will make a motion to tentatively adopt its 2016-17
budget at its April 27 meeting. The budget allows for an expenditure level of around $64 million,
which represents a 3.48 percent increase over last year's budget, according to
a news release from Jeff Mummert, the district's business administrator. To help fund the budget, the district is
proposing to increase real estate taxes 3.22 percent, which equates to an
increase of $87.65 for the average homeowner in the district, the release
states. This percentage is down from the preliminary budget number of 4.69
percent because the board chose not to approve an exception for retirement
and only the excess required special education expenses, Mummert said.
Can we trust
the Philadelphia District’s yardstick for school quality?
Kevin McCorry speaks with Tom
MacDonald about SPR data on NewsWorks Tonight
WHYY
Newsworks BY KEVIN MCCORRY
APRIL 27, 2016
There
are many reasons to be wary about relying too heavily on the School District of
Philadelphia’s main tool for measuring school quality – especially when it
comes to making high-stakes decisions about closures, staffing shake-ups and
charter conversions. Presented with a
NewsWorks analysis of the publically available results of the first three years
of the School Progress Report, top district officials acknowledged that the
tool can not be used reliably to evaluate the effectiveness of schools over
time. Because of the way the district
has manipulated the inner-workings of SPR each year, leaders say reports should
be considered standalone snapshots in time.
Reading the reports, though – which showcase outcomes over years – can
leave the public with a much different impression.
Harvard study:
Soda tax would make Phila. healthier
Inquirer
by Don Sapatkin, Staff
Writer Updated: APRIL 27,
2016 — 11:06 PM EDT
Harvard
University researchers are projecting major health benefits if Mayor Kenney's
proposed tax on sugar-sweetened beverages is enacted. Within a few years of the
three-cents-an-ounce tax's beginning, they forecast, nearly 2,300 diabetes
diagnoses would be prevented annually, and eventually, 36,000 people a year
would avoid obesity. Over a decade, about 730 deaths would be averted, and
close to $200 million saved in health spending.
"It is just a total winner of a policy from a public health
perspective," said Steven Gortmaker, who led the analysis, being released
Thursday. The mayor's argument for an
excise tax that would add 36 cents to the cost of a can of soda has focused
largely on the revenue it could provide for universal prekindergarten and other
programs. Health benefits have taken a backseat in his campaign.
Diane Ravitch has a most unusual
conversation with a billionaire school reformer
Washington
Post By Valerie Strauss April 27 at 3:05 PM
Regular readers of this blog know Diane Ravitch. The education
historian and activist has been the titular leader of the movement against
corporate school reform since the publication of her 2010 book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,”
which details why she stopped supporting No Child Left Behind and standardized
test-based school reform. Ravitch’s book popularized the phrase “The
Billionaire Boys Club” with a chapter that describes the role of the three
foundations that have spent the most money in K-12 education reform: the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the
Walton Family Foundation. Those three
foundations are hardly the only ones in the education reform sector, and there
are many other extremely wealthy individuals who have been pouring money into
reform projects for years now. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, for example,
gave $100 million to the Newark public schools — much of it wasted — and is now
planning, with his wife, Priscilla Chan, to open a private, tuition-free school
for low-income children in East Palo Alto, Calif., that will integrate health
care and support for families with classroom learning.
Whitney
Tilson is a billionaire hedge fund manager who has long been involved in school
reform. Among other enterprises, he was a founder of Teach For America as well
as Democrats for Education Reform. It
turns out Ravitch and Tilson — who hold some vastly different views on many
reform issues — communicate every now and then, and recently had a rather
unusual conversation about school reform on their respective blogs (hers is here and his is here).
Ravitch posted it all and gave me permission to republish it.
Tennessee cancels standardized testing in
elementary and middle schools, citing delayed delivery of exams
Washington
Post By Emma Brown April 27 at 5:27 PM
Tennessee officials announced Wednesday that they are suspending
standardized testing for elementary and middle school students for the
remainder of the spring, saying that the state’s testing vendor has
repeatedly failed to deliver the exams as promised. High school students will continue with
testing, since the vendor did ship exams to all of the state’s high schools,
officials said. Candice McQueen,
Tennessee’s education commissioner, also announced that she was
terminating the state’s contract with the vendor, Durham, N.C.-based Measurement
Inc. Though the company promised to deliver all tests by April 22, and then by
April 27, 2 million documents are yet to be shipped, and all of the state’s
school districts are missing some testing materials, she said. “We will not ask districts to continue
waiting on a vendor that has repeatedly failed us,” McQueen said. “I’m
incredibly frustrated that our educators and students have given so much and
yet our vendor has not provided reliability.”
Low Performers
Show Big Declines on 12th Grade NAEP Test
Education
Week By Liana Heitin on April 27,
2016 4:35 AM
Much
like their 4th and 8th grade peers, high
school seniors have lost ground in math over the last two years, according to
the most recent scores on a national achievement test. In reading, 12th grade scores remained flat,
continuing a trend since 2009. Perhaps
the most striking detail in the test data, though, is that the lowest achievers
showed large score drops in both math and reading. Between 2013 and 2015,
students at or below the 10th percentile in reading went down an average of 6
points on the National Assessment for Educational Progress—the largest drop in
a two-year period since 1994. The high achievers, on the other hand—those at or
above the 90th percentile—did significantly better in reading, gaining two
points, on average, while staying stagnant in math. "In the case of reading ... students at
the top of the distribution are going up and students at the bottom of the
distribution are going down," said Peggy G. Carr, the acting commissioner
of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers NAEP, during
an April 26 media call. "I think that's something we need to think about.
... This is a pattern we're seeing in other data." As for the mathematics average score, "I
think the decline is real," she added.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.