You are receiving this email because you previously expressed
interest in public education policy and advocacy efforts. If you would
like to have your name removed from the list for any reason, please reply
with “REMOVE” in the subject line and I will gladly remove you from the
Keystone State Education Coalition distribution list. If any of your
colleagues would like to be added to the list please have them send their name,
title and affiliation.
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 August 11, 2016:
In
1977 Amy Carter became the first child of a sitting U.S. president to attend public
school since 1906. She still is.
“Hamlet's 90-day plan includes creating
a transition team of national experts to “accurately assess where we are and
where we need to go,” he said. Their
analysis will center on the district's budget, instructional programming,
disciplinary procedures and organizational structure and staffing. The transition team will present its findings
to the school board this year, and the results will “guide the creation” of the
district's five-year strategic plan, Hamlet said. He will conduct nine forums for the
community, students, teachers and administrators, the first of which is
scheduled for Aug. 25 at the Barack Obama Academy.”
New Pittsburgh school superintendent puts transition plan before
board committee
Trib Live BY TONY
RAAP | Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016, 9:42 p.m.
Pittsburgh Public Schools need to
be more student focused, the district's new superintendent said Tuesday in
laying out his 90-day transition plan. For
that to happen, the district needs to “elevate the student voice” by creating a
forum for young people to “express their needs and goals with their peers,
teachers and administrators,” said Anthony Hamlet, who presented his
multi-pronged plan to the school board's education committee at district
headquarters in Oakland. “When young
people see that their opinions and needs matter, they have increased ownership
of their own learning,” said Hamlet, who was sworn in as superintendent July 1. “I want to listen to them and encourage them
to find solutions to those challenges so that they can better reap the benefits
of learning,” he added.
Innovative
Arts Charter School probing who authorized newspaper ad
Sarah
M. Wojcik Contact Reporter Of The Morning
Call August 10, 2016
CATASAUQUA — The Innovative Arts
Academy Charter School is looking into who authorized a full page newspaper ad
in the Sunday edition of The Morning Call.
The school's Chief Executive Officer Loraine Petrillo said the
advertisement would be a topic of discussion at Wednesday's board of trustees
meeting. "We're not sure who
authorized the ad," she said. "This just looks like we're spending
money frivolously and that's not the case." The ad came
under fire during a Bethlehem Area School District finance committee meeting
Monday when board members criticized the charter school for spending
what they believed was a significant amount of money on advertising. Spending
thousands of dollars on an ad, board Vice President Shannon Patrick said is
money that could be spent educating a student.
“Supt. Shelly Merkle said there are a
couple of factors that influence the starting date. The fall sports seasons are
starting, so families are already returning from vacation. But the larger
factor, she said, is that once state assessments and other tests like AP exams
are over in April and May, students are really ready to end the school year. "If they see the end in sight, let's put
the end in sight," she said, adding that front-loading the calendar also
gives more time to prepare for all of those assessments, too.”
Back to school already? Yes,
for some in York County
York
Daily Record by Angie Mason, amason@ydr.com 2:23 p.m. EDT August 10, 2016
Jadelyn Beltran was so eager
for the first day of second grade that she couldn't sleep the night
before. She tried her clothes on twice and on Wednesday morning, pulled
her dad Hector Cruz down the street toward Lincoln Charter School. "She's been excited since school ended
in June," Cruz said. Lincoln
welcomed students back for the 2016-17 school year on Wednesday. The charter
school in York has an extended school year, with 198 student days, so they
begin earlier than most. Schools are required to have 180 days for students. But some school districts are starting to
bring students back earlier and earlier, too. Starting dates in York County
districts stretch from Aug. 17 to Aug. 31 this year.
Philly
Mayor’s Office of Education Launches New Website
The Mayor’s Office of Education August
9, 2016
The Mayor’s Office of Education
today launched a new website offering vital information about the
administration’s key education initiatives: expanding quality pre-K, creating
community schools, and promoting career and technical education opportunities. Developed by the City’s Office of Open Data
and Digital Transformation, the website at www.phila.gov/education also
features information on programs such as free computer access through KEYSPOTS,
college prep, adult education, and the “Read by 4th!” literacy campaign. For
initiatives such as pre-K and community schools, residents can sign up for
newsletters on the initiatives and get information about enrollment and
partnership opportunities.
In 1977 Amy Carter became the first
child of a sitting U.S. president to attend a public school since 1906. She
still is.
A Public-School Paradox
Why do so many presidents send
their kids to private school?
The Atlantic by Alia Wong AUG
10, 2016
When President Jimmy Carter
assumed office in 1977, he did something remarkable: He enrolled his 9-year-old
daughter, Amy, in a predominantly black Washington, D.C., public school. The
move was symbolic, a commitment the Democrat from Georgia had made even before
he securing the presidency. In his presidential-nomination acceptance speech
the previous year, Carter criticized“exclusive
private schools that allow the children of the political and economic elite to
avoid public schools that are considered dangerous or inferior.” Amy became the first child of a sitting U.S.
president to attend a public school since 1906. She still is. When Sasha and
Malia Obama moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their dad, they enrolled in
the $40,000-a-year Sidwell
Friends—a highly selective Quaker school that also boasts Chelsea Clinton,
Julie and Tricia Nixon, and Albert Gore III, among other political progeny, as
alumni.
As Charter Schools Turn 25, Five Ways to Share Their Success With
Traditional Schools
The 74 by NINA REES and CATHERINE BROWN June 1, 2016
Nina Rees is the president & CEO of the National Alliance for
Public Charter Schools.
Catherine Brown is the vice president of education policy at the
Center for American Progress. Nina Rees is the president and CEO of the
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Twenty-five years ago, Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson signed
our nation’s first law to allow for publicly funded, independently run
“outcomes-based” charter schools. The legislation set the stage for greater
innovation in public education, providing the opportunity to explore different
teaching methods and establishing new forms of accountability for schools. Developed by veteran inner-city teachers
tired of seeing their students drop out in droves, City Academy in St. Paul,
Minnesota was the first such charter school to open its doors. Today, charter schools educate 3 million, or
6 percent of, public school students in 43 states and the District of Columbia,
mostly in urban areas. In 14 cities, charter schools educate at least 30
percent of the students.
“The Walton Family Foundation has played
a leading role in the growth of the charter school movement. It was one of the
first philanthropies to support the expansion of high-quality public charter
schools. “
Public Charter Schools Turn 25 Years Old
Walton Family Foundation
August 4, 2016
The birth and growth of a
movement
Twenty-five years ago,
Minnesota’s governor signed the country’s first charter school law — paving the
way to the creation of more than 6,800 public charter schools serving about 2.9
million students. “As long as we
have the law of chartering, we have the basis for innovation,” said Ember
Reichgott Junge, the former Minnesota State Senator who authored the original
legislation told EdWeek in arecent interview. “The chartering law doesn’t create the
innovation itself, it creates the opportunity for innovation for the right
leaders.” An education analyst,
Ray Budde, published Education by Charter: Restructuring School Districts, a
1988 report that proposed a new model for school governance. His idea sparked a
national dialogue, which led to the passage of the first charter law three
years later. California adopted
the country’s second charter school law the following year, and today there are
charter laws in 43 states and the District of Columbia.
As the charter movement matured,
there were efforts to replicate the school models that were proving most
successful. There were also efforts to ensure accountability — so that charter
schools were truly providing high-quality education to their students. And,
increasingly, there were efforts to study charter schools’ results.
Blogger note: In 2015 the Walton Family
Foundation granted $179 million in support of charter schools
Walton Family Foundation Grant Reports
Walton Family Foundation Website
See complete lists of Walton
Family Foundation annual grantmaking.
·
2015: Annual Report | Grant
Report
·
2014: Annual
Report | Grant
Report
·
2013: Annual Report | Grant
Report
“Charter schools claim to be public
schools, but the only thing "public" about them is their funding.
They are run by private boards that do not hold open meetings, as elected
boards of education do; they are neither transparent nor accountable in their
finances.”
Worldwide, Public Education Is Up for Sale
From the U.K. to Liberia, the
school privatization movement gathers steam.
US News By Diane Ravitch | Contributor
Aug. 9, 2016, at 12:13 p.m.
For the past three decades,
critics of public education in the United States have
assailed it and used its flaws to promote publicly funded privatization.
Corporate and political interests have attacked the very concept of public
education, claiming that the private sector is invariably superior to the
public sector. These developments are by
no means limited to the U.S.; the same movement to privatize public schools is
occurring in the United Kingdom,
Africa and other regions – with troubling implications. In the U.K., the Conservative Party
government wants to turn all public schools into private academies, funded by
taxpayers. The British multinational corporation Pearson has ambitions to open
for-profit schools using its products in many nations across the world. In
Africa, a corporation called Bridge
International Academies (BIA) is opening for-profit schools in poor
countries that cost $1 a week. Liberia is considering outsourcing its entire elementary program to BIA, which is funded by
American billionaires Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and others from Wall Street.
These Charter Schools Tried to Turn Public Education Into Big Business. They Failed.
Slate.com By Jessica Huseman December 2015
It takes time, and nearly infinite patience, to build academically strong networks of schools from scratch. Investors aren’t used to waiting, though.
More and more these days,
Americans think about schools using the language of business. Superintendents
are “CEOs.” Districts manage “portfolios” of schools. And pundits talk
obsessively about American schools’ “competitiveness.” But we don’t always like them to act like
businesses, particularly when it comes to having an overt profit motive. Partly
as a result, for-profit public charter schools—at least the
brick-and-mortar variety—are slowly dying in some states. Once touted as a
model that would reduce inefficiencies in public education and achieve
economies of scales by operating schools in multiple states, for-profit
charters have fallen out of fashion. Charter schools in general are
becoming more popular across the country, but since the early 2000s, for-profit
charter operators have lost ground to their nonprofit peers. And their failure,
in large part, has been the result of bad business plans—something the
companies themselves freely admit.
A Building Boom for Charter Schools Is
Coming. Guess Who's Footing the Bill?
Inside Philanthropy by 
Paul Perry August 9, 2016
Everyone knows the Walton Family
Foundation backs charter schools, but many people don’t realize just how
instrumental its money has been in creating new charters nationwide. The
foundation reports that in the past 20 years or so, it has invested “more than
$385 million in 2,110 new public charter schools—about a quarter of all
charters nationally. This past year, we supported more than one in five of the
nearly 500 new charters that opened nationally.” Walton has also given tens of
millions to build a teacher pipeline for charters, create a charter-friendly
public policy environment, and more. That’s
a huge investment. And significantly, much of it has taken the form of
bricks-and-mortar funding, which many other major foundations avoid. Now, even
more Walton money is set to flow to charters as it doubles down in this area
over the next five years. On the 25th
anniversary of the charter school movement, the Walmart heirs announced a major
$250 million dollar initiative to help charter schools in 17 cities expand
their facilities (and build new ones) to add another 250,000 seats for children
by 2027.
“In the spirit of provoking a constructive civic debate —
one that actually honors the separation between state and federal powers — I
present my wish list of presidential debate topics on education policy.
Regardless of the positions the respective candidates might take, coverage of
these five questions would inform voters about differences they could actually
make in our public education system if elected.”
What we need to know from candidates on education policy
Brookings BROWN CENTER CHALKBOARD By Michael Hansen Tuesday, August 9,
2016
Editor's Note:
In advance of the Oct. 19 presidential debate at UNLV, The
Sunday and the Brookings Institution in partnership with UNLV and Brookings
Mountain West are presenting a series of guest columns on state and national
election issues. The columns will appear weekly. This column originally
appeared in the Las
Vegas Sun.
Those working in the education policy industry, as I do,
always find reasons to complain during presidential election cycles, and the
bellyaching seems amplified this year. What is our complaint? That our darling
area of public policy receives so little attention in the limelight of civic
debate that comes with the general election.
I acknowledge these hurts are mostly irrational. Any American civics
teacher could tell you that in our federalist republic, the provision of public
education is under the jurisdiction of states and commonly administered by
local districts, not the federal government led by the president. Thus, our
complaints have just as much power in campaigns for the office as bemoaning the
lack of debate on state tax policy or land-use zoning decisions.
What's
Driving the Opt-Out Movement? The belief that high-stakes testing promotes rote
learning and is unfair to teachers, a TC survey finds
Teachers College,
Columbia UniversityDownload report: “Who Opts Out and Why?
Teachers College unveiled the
findings of Who
Opts Out and Why?—the first national, independent survey of the
“opt-out” movement—which reveals that supporters oppose the use of test scores
to evaluate teachers and believe that high-stakes tests force teachers to
“teach to the test” rather than employ strategies that promote deeper learning.
The new survey also reports concern among supporters about the growing role of
corporations and privatization of schools. “For activists, the concerns are
about more than the tests,” said Oren Pizmony-Levy, TC Assistant
Professor of International and Comparative Education, who co-authored the study
with Nancy Green Saraisky, Research Associate and TC alumna. “We were
surprised that the survey reveals a broader concern about corporate education
reform relying on standardized test-based accountability, and the increased
role of ‘edu-businesses’ and corporations in schools.”
Who Opts Out and Why? also reveals that opt-out
proponents oppose high-stakes, standardized testing because they believe it
takes away too much instructional time.
The survey follows recent reports that the opt-out movement in New York
has neither grown nor faded. In its July 29 report on 2016 standardized test
scores, New York State disclosed that about 21 percent, or an estimated 250,000
of the approximately 1.1 million eligible public school students across the
state, declined to take the tests. These figures do not significantly differ
from the previous year, when New York State led the nation in combined
math and English Language Arts test refusals.
Education Bloggers Daily Highlights
8/11/2016
Testing
Resistance & Reform News: August 3 - 9, 2016
FairTest Submitted by
fairtest on August 9, 2016 - 1:19pm
FairTest hopes that these news
summaries, which now go to several thousand activists, educators and
policymakers each week, provide useful material for your assessment reform
work. Please remember that you can support FairTest projects, including
"Testing Resistance & Reform News" by making a contribution
at: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/fairtest --
thank you!
American Public Education Foundation Website
The Star-Spangled Banner will be sung by school children nationwide on Friday, September 9, 2016 at 10:00am PST and 1:00pm EST. Students will learn about the words and meaning of the flag and sing the first stanza. This will be the third annual simultaneous sing-a-long event created by the APEF-9/12 Generation Project. The project aims to bring students together – as the world came together – on September 12, 2001.
Registration
for the PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference Oct. 13-15 is now open
The conference
is your opportunity to learn, network and be inspired by peers and
experts.
TO REGISTER: See https://www.psba.org/members-area/store-registration/
(you must be logged in to the Members Area to register). You can read more
on How
to Register for a PSBA Event here. CONFERENCE WEBSITE: For all other program
details, schedules, exhibits, etc., see the conference website:www.paschoolleaders.org.
PSBA
Officer Elections Aug. 15-Oct. 3, 2016: Slate of Candidates
PSBA members seeking election to
office for the association were required to submit a nomination form no later
than April 30, 2016, to be considered. All candidates who properly completed
applications by the deadline are included on the slate of candidates below. In
addition, the Leadership Development Committee met on June 24 at PSBA
headquarters in Mechanicsburg to interview candidates. According to bylaws, the
Leadership Development Committee may determine candidates highly qualified for
the office they seek. This is noted next to each person’s name with an asterisk
(*). Each school entity will have one
vote for each officer. This will require boards of the various school entities
to come to a consensus on each candidate and cast their vote electronically
during the open voting period (Aug. 15-Oct. 3, 2016). Voting will be
accomplished through a secure third-party, web-based voting site that will
require a password login. One person from each member school entity will be
authorized as the official person to cast the vote on behalf of his or her
school entity. In the case of school districts, it will be the board secretary
who will cast votes on behalf of the school board.
Special note: Boards should be
sure to include discussion and voting on candidates to its agenda during one of
its meetings in September.
PA Supreme Court sets Sept. 13 argument
date for fair education funding lawsuit in Philly
Thorough
and Efficient Blog JUNE 16, 2016 BARBGRIMALDI LEAVE A COMMENT
Good post.
ReplyDelete