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Keystone
State Education Coalition
PA
Ed Policy Roundup October 20, 2016
Welcome to
the world of PA charter school management companies…
Blogger commentary: Potential for fraud,
waste and abuse?
In the Kevin McCorry/Newsworks piece
below, PA Auditor General DePasquale is quoted as follows: "When you have
the larger management companies running a broad chunk of schools, we view that
as a major issue," he said. "If you were not allowed to find out the
salary of your school district superintendent, what would be the outcry in your
district?...There would be pitchforks at that meeting. In many of the
management companies, we don't even get to see the salaries let alone the
costs."
How about, if in addition to the salary
of your superintendent, you were not allowed to find out any of your district’s
expenses including salaries for all teachers, administrators, and staff; all
maintenance and facilities costs; and all other major supports of the school.? Welcome to the world of Pennsylvania charter
school management companies. BTW, HB530
does nothing to address their absolute total lack of transparency regarding
taxpayer dollars.
We’re going to be offline for a few
days, with the PA Ed Policy Roundup returning on Tuesday, October 25th.
Please keep up your opposition to HB530 and have a great weekend.
Legislative Alert – Please Call Your
Legislators Today Asking Them to Oppose HB530, the Charter School Expansion
Bill
Please
ask your colleagues to do the same. Bill
could be fast-tracked today and run through the legislature in as little as 48
hours.
House Members Contact info:
Senate Members Contact info:
Pennsylvania has the worst
charter school law in the country and it is long overdue for renewal,
especially to address fraud, waste and abuse and a total lack of transparency by
charter management companies. HB530 does
absolutely nothing to address those concerns.
It would allow for unregulated expansion of charter schools with less
accountability for taxpayer dollars while also diluting existing authorizer
oversight
Don't
be fooled by House Bill 530, so called charter reform legislation. The
legislation could be considered by the House Rules committee at any time and
shortly afterward receive a vote by the entire house. We need to stop this bill
by educating representatives on its numerous sections that remove
accountability and oversight of charter schools. Click here for a full
explanation of the bill and an action alert you can send. https://www.psba.org/2016/10/house-bill-530-not-charter-school-reform/
House
Bill 530 is Not Charter School Reform
Let’s stop pretending — The need for
meaningful charter school reform is urgent, but that reform is NOT contained in
House Bill 530.
PSBA Website October 10, 2016
House Bill 530 is not a genuine
effort to improve the quality of education that our children receive, and it
does little to provide real change in the way charter schools are operated,
funded or held accountable. Instead, it enables the expansion of charter
schools with less accountability and oversight, and actually dilutes existing
powers of oversight. Language purported to set tighter rules for financial
transparency and accountability contains provisions that are already required. House
Bill 530 simply perpetuates and expands the system of privatized public
schools. Here’s why:
House Ready to Vote on Charter School
Expansion Bill
“In a statement,
the Department of Education said it took down the scores after it was alerted
to a data accuracy issue with the Pennsylvania Value Added Assessment System
scores, which are part of the school performance profile growth measure. While it
appears only a small number of schools will see “a modest change” on their
school performance profile score, ensuring the data being published is accurate
was most important. That’s why the department is taking steps to correct the
data and calculate new scores.”
Pa. pulling academic scores from website
for further review
Daily
Local By Eric Devlin, edevlin@21st-centurymedia.com, @Eric_Devlin on Twitter POSTED: 10/19/16, 8:30 PM
EDT | UPDATED: 5 HRS AGO
The Pennsylvania Department of
Education announced Wednesday it is pulling the academic data from its school
performance profile report card website for further review.
According to an email obtained by
Digital First Media, school officials from across the state were invited to
attend a face-to-face meeting with state Education Secretary Pedro Rivera and
Deputy Secretary Matthew Stem to discuss the school performance profile data.
At that meeting, the two men will provide additional background information. Three sessions will be held across the state
including one today in Malvern at 1:30 p.m. at Pennsylvania Training and
Technical Assistance Network East, 333 Technology Drive.
PDE
Releases ESSA Workgroup Report; Set to Begin Developing Pennsylvania's State
Plan
NEWS PROVIDED BY Pennsylvania Department of Education
Oct 18, 2016, 14:50 ET
HARRISBURG, Pa., Oct. 18,
2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Secretary Pedro A. Rivera
thanked hundreds of stakeholders for their involvement in a series of workgroup
meetings to help develop Pennsylvania's plan to implement the
federally-approved Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The Pennsylvania
Department of Education (PDE) has worked closely with stakeholders --soliciting
insight, feedback, and suggestions-- as it began development of the
state plan for the implementation of federal law that replaces No Child Left
Behind. The meetings, which began in
April, were facilitated by PDE and the Council of Chief State School Officers
(CCSSO), the nonpartisan, national association of state education leaders. The
workgroups focused on four key areas of ESSA: accountability, assessment,
educator certification, and educator evaluation. "Pennsylvania finds itself in the
unprecedented position to redefine what learning means to us in the commonwealth,
and determine which direction we want our public education system to go under
this landmark new law," said Secretary Rivera. "I thank the
stakeholders and experts who joined our discussion and fostered the development
of inspired ideas that the Department will use to shape our state plan."
ESSA
STAKEHOLDER SESSION & REPORT RELEASE, OCTOBER 18, 2016
PA Department of Education Website
AIR Report - The Every Student Succeeds Act in PA:
Recommendations from Stakeholder Work Groups & Associated Research (October
2016) (PDF)ESSA General Stakeholder Meeting (PPT)
Session Agenda (PDF)
New York, Pennsylvania Cite ESSA Planning Progress
Education Week State Ed Watch By Daarel
Burnette II on October 19, 2016 10:39 AM
The state education agencies in New York and
Pennsylvania this week announced that they are narrowing the focus for their
ESSA plans after receiving feedback from the public. Pennsylvania's department said Tuesday that members of
the public told them to, among other things, rely less on test scores to hold
schools accountable, to improve the teacher professional development and
evaluation systems, and to reduce the amount of time students spend taking
tests. The department will review all of the feedback, which was compiled by
the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and encorporate it into the state's ESSA
plan, due to the U.S. Department of Education next spring.
Federal report on charter schools elicits
more calls to revise Pa. law
The report, which studied 33
charter management organizations in six states, found that two-thirds were
cause for concern.
Newsworks by Kevin McCorry October
19, 2016 — 11:34am
CORRECTED AND
UPDATED: 10/19/2016
Some charter schools operate like
islands — day-to-day they run independently of any higher or centralized power. Others contract with a management
organization — sometimes part of a big network, sometimes not. Sometimes
for-profit, sometimes not. It's these
charter management organizations, or CMOs, that have been criticized recently
by the Office of the Inspector General inside the U.S. Department of
Education. In a September report, the
OIG warned that CMOs pose a "significant risk" to both taxpayer
dollars and performance expectations. The
report studied 33 CMOs in six states and found that two-thirds were cause
for concern, with internal weaknesses that put federal tax dollars at
risk. Pennsylvania was one of the
states investigated, and the report echoed much of what Pa. Auditor General
Eugene DePasquale has already flagged about CMOs in the state.
By Andrew Goldstein / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette October 19, 2016 9:19 PM
Pittsburgh Public Schools
superintendent Anthony Hamlet on Wednesday announced the appointment of three
more positions to his 15-member executive cabinet. The chief academic officer, chief of school
performance and chief human resources officer were selected out of nearly 300
school administrators from throughout the Northeast and South United
States who applied for the positions.
Mr. Hamlet and five other administrators interviewed dozens of the
candidates before making the appointments, which the superintendent brought to
the school board at its Wednesday night legislative meeting.
Here’s
Why Adopting a New School Funding Formula, without Greater Investment, Is Not
Enough
Campaign for Fair Education
Funding Website
Research shows that education
funding affects student achievement. So the spending gap between wealthy and
poor school districts in Pennsylvania – the widest in the nation – has a very
real impact on students’ lives. Pennsylvania’s new fair funding formula begins
to address this problem, but will not cure the student achievement gap alone.
The state still does not invest enough funding to ensure that all students can
meet academic standards, no matter their zip code.
“So concludes a
long, parched walk in the desert for education in these debates.”
K-12 Gets Scant Attention in Final Debate:
What Education Issues Got Ignored?
Education Week Politics K12 Blog By Andrew Ujifusa on October 19, 2016 10:53 PM
On Wednesday night—for the third
and final time in 2016—a presidential debate featuring Democratic nominee Hillary
Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump was virtually devoid
of substantive K-12 talk. In an exchange
roughly 40 minutes into the debate in Las Vegas, Clinton made a pitch for a
stronger educational system from early education through college, and she said
she would help the economy through better career and technical education
programs. "I feel strongly we have to
have an education system that starts with preschool and goes through
college," Clinton said. Later, she
cited her background working for
the Children's Defense Fund and other work on education while
she was first lady in Arkansas. Clinton also touted investments she wanted
to make in education, although she didn't provide more specifics. Clinton also
briefly referenced the Clinton Foundation's
Healthy Schools program.
But other than those quick references to education, there was little for
K-12 observers and advocates to chew on. Trump did not mention the topic at
all.
Checking
Back In On The Barber Who Encourages Kids To Read
NPR JENNIFER GUERRA October 19, 201612:50 PM ET
It has been a crazy few
days for Ryan Griffin, the guy behind the Read-to-a-Barber program we
wrote about on the NPR Ed blog last week. He says the phone at The
Fuller Cut in Ypsilanti, Mich., has been ringing nonstop since the story ran. Calls of support, yes, but also calls from
reporters in Australia, England, Germany and pretty much every major market in
the U.S. The story has been picked up by CBS
News, ABC
News and The
Huffington Post, just to name a few.
So I dropped by the barbershop
Tuesday to check in on Griffin and see what, if anything, has changed.
Charters
used to enjoy bipartisan support. Not anymore
By David Scharfenberg BOSTON GLOBE STAFF OCTOBER
18, 2016
BROOKLINE — Massachusetts’
23-year-old charter school experiment has long enjoyed bipartisan support. Just
a few months ago, polls showed Democrats and Republicans alike supported an
upcoming ballot measure that would allow for more of the schools. But recent surveys show Democrats turning
against the question — breaking the broad consensus on charters and threatening
to stall one of the country’s most ambitious efforts to reshape public
education. A new WBUR poll out Wednesday
morning has the ballot measure failing by 11 points overall, with Democrats
opposing it 64 to 30 percent.
Don't Teach For America, teach for real
Columbia
Spectator BY DANIEL
BERGERSON | OCTOBER 12, 2016, 10:43 PM
Daniel
Bergerson is a Columbia College senior studying history and urban teaching.
I almost fell for Teach For
America. Its brochure told me I could “make a difference” after college by
postponing my imaginary yet promising career for two short years in order to
teach in a low-income area. As a senior
in high school, I did not yet know that “making a difference” meant
shortchanging students in need of real teachers, deprofessionalizing the
teaching profession, and leading the charge to privatize schools. Over the next three years, however, Teach For
America’s narrative of “teaching as leadership” unraveled before me piece
by piece, myth by debunkable myth. As I familiarized myself with the existing
research, spoke with experienced educators, and underwent my own teacher
training in the Barnard Education Program, it became clear that I did not want
to Teach For America. I wanted to teach for real.
Philadelphia Film Festival: Backpack Full
of Cash
A Film by Sarah Mondale 2016
5:10 PM Sat, Oct 22 Prince Theater
4:10 PM Sat, Oct 29 Prince Theater
Philadelphia is at the forefront
of this enlightening and alarming documentary narrated by Matt Damon that
explores the effects and implications of diminishing funds for public schools
and the growing concern over the charter school system.
Reminder: November Workshops and
Webinar on the New PA Funding Formula
PASA,
PSBA, PAIU, PARSS, the PA Principals Association and PASBO have scheduled nine on-site
workshops across the commonwealth and one webcast to provide an in-depth
discussion of the new basic education funding formula: how it works, what it
measures and why it’s important for Pennsylvania’s school districts. The
workshops, funded through a grant from the William Penn Foundation, will be
offered at IUs 3, 4, 8, 10, 15, 17, 18, 20 and 24 beginning in November. Click
here for workshop dates and details and information about
registration. Capacity is limited at all locations, so registration is
required and is first come, first served.
Share
your interest in volunteering with PSBA
Complete this form to share your
interest in volunteering with PSBA
The 2016 Arts and Education Symposium will be held on October 27 at the Radisson Hotel Harrisburg Convention Center. Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Arts Education network and EPLC, the Symposium is a Unique Networking and Learning Opportunity for:
·
Arts Educators
·
School Leaders
·
Artists
·
Arts and Culture Community Leaders
·
Arts-related Business Leaders
·
Arts Education Faculty and Administrators in Higher Education
·
Advocates
·
State and Local Policy Leaders
Act 48 Credit is
available.Program and registration information are available here.
PA Principals Association website Tuesday, August 2, 2016 10:43 AM
To receive the Early Bird Discount, you must be registered by August 31, 2016:
Members: $300 Non-Members: $400
Featuring Three National Keynote Speakers: Eric Sheninger, Jill Jackson & Salome Thomas-EL
SAVE THE DATE LWVPA Convention 2017 June
1-4, 2017
Join the
League of Women Voters of PA for our 2017 Biennial Convention at the beautiful
Inn at Pocono Manor!
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