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Keystone
State Education Coalition
Why it’s essential
for Pa. to invest in education
Congrats/Condolences to all the new Pennsylvania school
directors who took the oath of office for the first time this week! Have your new board members send their email
addresses to signup for the PA Ed Policy Roundup and/or follow us on twitter
@lfeinberg
Blogger
note: we’ve been experiencing some spam filter issues the past couple days
interfering with email deliveries. If you did not receive the Roundup emails on
Monday and Tuesday you can view them at our blog site here
and here.
Guest
Column: Why it’s essential for Pa. to invest in
education
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf believes spending
money on education is essential to the Commonwealth’s economy. Associated
Press
Delco Times Opinion By
Tom Wolf, Times Guest Columnist POSTED: 12/05/17,
7:28 PM EST | UPDATED: 6 HRS AGO
Having built a business, I understand that companies
are only as strong as the people who work there, new businesses will only come
to a state that invests in education and offers a skilled workforce, and
existing businesses will only expand if they can hire the talented people to
support that growth. That’s why I shared profits with my employees, offered
training programs, and worked in my community to expand links between
businesses and schools. So, to help Pennsylvania’s economy continue to thrive
and create new middle-class jobs, we must continue to invest in education. That
is why I have fought to increase funding - from pre-K to K-12 to college and
career training. After years of devastating school cuts that led to teacher
layoffs and larger class sizes, we have reversed the trend and restored the
cuts. Pennsylvania has made education and job training a priority again. As our
economy grows, we must ensure we have skilled workers and good schools that
attract new companies. Over the past three years, we have restored the harmful
cuts made to our schools and implemented a fair funding formula.
Governor
Wolf Joins Bipartisan Governors’ Partnership to Expand Computer Science in
Schools
Governor Wolf’s
Website December 04, 2017
Harrisburg,
PA – Building on
his support of making computer science education available for all students,
Governor Tom Wolf is today joined the bipartisan Governors’ Partnership for
K-12 Computer Science, a multi-state initiative organized by Code.org. The national
coalition is committed to increasing access and funding for computer science
education in K-12 schools. “Over the next decade, seven in ten jobs in
Pennsylvania will require workers to use computers and technology,” said
Governor Wolf. “We must do more to make computer science education available in
our schools and prepare our children for these highest-paying, fastest-growing
jobs in the country and bring new opportunities to the commonwealth.” Through
the partnership, which includes 13 states, Governor Wolf is supporting policies
that enable all high schools to offer at least one rigorous computer science
course, fund professional learning opportunities so teachers can teach the
courses, and establish standards to ensure quality and equity.
Editorial:
It’s time for Congress to fund CHIP
Delco Times Editorial POSTED: 12/05/17,
7:26 PM EST | UPDATED: 1 MIN AGO
That massive tax reform plan is not the only fiscal
nightmare that is rattling around the nation’s Capitol. There is another
problem that has now been festering for more than two months, one that affects
some of the most needy among us – children. Thousands of children across the
region are in danger of losing their health insurance. And yes, this one is
connected at the hip with the blind zeal of some in Washington to do away with
the signature legislation of the Obama Administration. While doing everything
in their power to gut and eventually do away with the program known as
Obamacare, our elected officials also have managed to allow funding for a
crucial children’s health program to lapse. CHIP, which stands for Children’s
Health Insurance Program, provides essential health benefits for thousands of
families. It started more than 20 years ago, but its funding has not been in
place since Sept. 30. Now several states, including Pennsylvania, are
scrambling for cash to prop up the program. CHIP steps in to offer health care
benefits for children from low-income families who earn too much to qualify for
traditional Medicaid coverage. The program has for the most part always
garnered broad, bipartisan support. It does, after all, provide for care for
needy kids. That does not mean it is above the partisan fray that has
surrounded health care in Washington, D.C.
The CHIP Program Is Beloved. Why Is Its Funding in Danger?
New York Times By ABBY GOODNOUGH and ROBERT PEAR DEC. 5, 2017
WILMINGTON, Del. — Laquita Gardner, a sales manager
at a furniture rental store here, was happy to get a raise recently except for
one problem. It lifted her income just enough to disqualify her and her two
young sons from Medicaid, the free health
insurance program for the poor. She was relieved to find another option was
available for the boys: the Children’s
Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, that covers nearly nine million
children whose parents earn too much for Medicaid, but not enough to afford
other coverage. But CHIP, a program that has had unusually strong bipartisan
support since it was created in 1997, is now in limbo — an unexpected victim of
the partisan rancor that has stymied legislative action in Washington this
year. Its federal funds ran out on Sept. 30, and Congress has not agreed on a
plan to renew the roughly $14 billion a year it spends on the program.
“The
trial is moving quickly and
could wrap up this week. Lawyers said two Republican lawmakers who could have
shed light on the creation of the map -- state Senate President pro tempore
Joseph Scarnati and House Speaker Mike Turzai -- would not be called to
testify.”
Gerrymandering:
Trial considers whether voters are harmed by redistricting
Penn Live By The Associated Press Updated Dec
5, 5:24 PM; Posted Dec 5, 5:19 PM
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- With more competitive
congressional districts, representatives would be more likely to work with the
opposing party and listen more closely to their constituents, Democrats suing
for a new congressional map in Pennsylvania told a panel of judges on Tuesday. Louis
Agre, the lead plaintiff in the case being heard in Philadelphia, said too many
incumbents now are mostly concerned about primary challenges from the fringes
within their own parties. With redrawn lines, he said, "we would have
hopefully people in competitive districts working together to solve our
problems." Agre, a union official and ward leader in a Philadelphia voting
district, and other Democratic voters are making the novel legal claim that no
partisan considerations should be given when lawmakers approve
district boundaries. They want the court to throw out the 2011 map in
Pennsylvania. Since it was adopted, Republicans have won 13 of the state's 18
seats in the House of Representatives each year -- even in 2012, when more
total votes were cast for Democrats.
Pennsylvania
voters testify in gerrymandering trial in federal court
WHYY By Lindsay Lazarski, WHYY December 5, 2017
On the second day
of trial in a federal case over partisan gerrymandering and the constitutionality
of Pennsylvania’s congressional district map, seven voters named as plaintiffs
in the case testified that they believe their vote doesn’t count. They’re
calling for a new map in time for the 2018 midterm election, when all 18 of
Pennsylvania’s congressional seats are up for grabs. Louis Agre, 63, a leader in Philadelphia’s
Democratic party, complained that elections aren’t competitive enough in the
2nd congressional district. In the last congressional election in 2016, U.S.
Rep. Dwight Evans (PA-2) defeated Republican challenger James Jones with more
than 90 percent of the vote. “Our votes are watered down by living in such a
highly concentrated district,” said Agre. Agre, a labor lawyer, testified that
there are too many Democrats in the district, which he believes leads to
uncompetitive elections and candidates who cater to voters on the far left of
the party rather than those in the middle with more moderate views.
How we are
failing Philly's foster children
The statistics on the education of kids in
foster care tell a grim story. In Philadelphia, schools, advocates and
organizations are working to write a happier ending.
The notebook by Dale Mezzacappa December 5, 2017 —
9:34am
Foster children in Philadelphia face obstacle after
obstacle in their quest to obtain a high-quality education. Philadelphia had
8,020 children in foster care in 2016, according to the State of Child Welfare
2017, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children report. That is a small fraction
of the 200,000 students attending District and charter schools, but still a
significant number. And a wider spectrum of young people find themselves
in the system, not just those who have been mistreated or neglected. “Our nation’s
child welfare systems were built to address specific issues: abuse and
neglect,” said Tracey Feild, director of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Child
Welfare Strategy Group. “But today, data indicate that more teens are coming
into care for reasons unrelated to maltreatment. Child welfare directors are
telling us that often teens are landing in child welfare placements because
they can’t get along with their parents.
“C.B. Community, located on the second
floor of a synagogue housed in what used to be a textile mill, rose from the
ashes of Arise Charter School, established in 2009 as the first charter school
in the country with a mission to educate foster children.”
A private
school just for foster children
Most kids arrive ‘mad at the world,’ the CEO
says. ‘They want to know: Why are people not taking care of me?’
The notebook by Dale Mezzacappa December 5, 2017 —
9:37am
Jullion Kelsey has gone through a lot.
The tall, strapping 18-year-old from South
Philadelphia grew up with his grandmother as his primary caregiver. He had
nobody else – his mom lived in Georgia “and I couldn’t live with her.” His grandmother made an effort. She sent him to a
charter school through 8th grade, and for high school, she insisted that he
enroll in a cyber school, doing his schoolwork and attending classes by
computer from home. She reasoned that he would “stay out of the mix, stay out
of trouble.” But he didn’t stay out of trouble, and his education
effectively came to a halt in that unsupervised environment. Then his
grandmother died, and he was on his own, bouncing “from [foster] placement to
placement.” Kelsey wound up at a group home upstate, where things didn’t go
well. By his own description, he was angry and acting out. He moved to an
all-boys group home in Philadelphia, “but there was a lot going on, and they
kicked me out of there.” Finally, he was able to move in with a relative in
Southwest Philadelphia. For the last several months, he has been taking the bus
and trolley every day to C.B. Community School in Roxborough, which was
established to educate foster children like him and set them on a course to a
stable future.
In a stunning development that will mean Upper
Perkiomen School District taxpayers spent $8 million for a hole in the ground,
the newly elected majority of the school board Monday night voted 5-4 to kill
the project on which construction has already begun. It took place at a
marathon four-hour meeting, moved to the high school auditorium due to the
expected crowd, which showed up in force -- on both sides of the issue. Newly
sworn in board members Melanie Cunningham, Stephen Cunningham, James Glackin
and newly elected School Board President Kerry Drake, joined board member
Raeann Hofkin in providing the five votes. Before the voting took place,
however, 24 speakers had their say and by the end of the night, 31 had spoken,
some more than once. A total of four of them spoke in favor of the board's
course of action.
“It’s crazy that we’re eliminating the
ability of people to deduct their state and local taxes that go directly to
local services, including schools . . . while at the same time providing a
$10,000 incentive for folks to send their kids to private schools,” said Sasha
Pudelski, assistant director for policy and advocacy at the American
Association of School Administrators, which represents public school
superintendents across the country.”
Analysis |
After a high-drama vote, here’s what the Senate tax bill means for schools,
parents and students
Post-Gazette by MORIAH BALINGIT AND NICK
ANDERSON The Washington Post 7:00 AM DEC 4, 2017
WASHINGTON - The Senate tax bill that passed in the
wee hours of Saturday morning could have massive implications for schools and
universities, students and parents. Public education advocates warned that
certain provisions could put pressure on state and local spending for public
schools while giving parents incentives to send children to private schools. The
bill passed 51 to 49 after senators worked through the night on last-minute
revisions and amendments - including some scribbled in the bill’s margins. The
legislation has to be reconciled with a version passed by the House before
being sent to President Donald Trump, but many of the provisions affecting
education are likely to stay. Public education advocates hammered the bill for
offering incentives to private school parents through tax-free school savings
accounts while eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes that fund
public schools.
Charter
schools, formed to offer a better alternative to failing public schools, are
among the nation’s most segregated
Post-Gazette by IVAN MORENO, LARRY FENN AND
MICHAEL MELIA Associated Press 2:30 AM DEC 5, 2017
MILWAUKEE — Charter schools are among the nation’s
most segregated, an Associated Press analysis finds — an outcome at odds,
critics say, with their goal of offering a better alternative to failing
traditional public schools. National enrollment data shows that charters are
vastly overrepresented among schools where minorities study in the most extreme
racial isolation. As of school year 2014-2015, more than 1,000 of the nation’s
6,747 charter schools had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent, and the number
has been rising steadily. The problem: Those levels of segregation correspond
with low achievement levels at schools of all kinds. In the AP analysis of
student achievement in the 42 states that have enacted charter school laws,
along with the District of Columbia, the performance of students in charter
schools varies widely. But schools that enroll 99 percent minorities — both
charters and traditional public schools — on average have fewer students
reaching state standards for proficiency in reading and math.
How
Effective Is Your School District? A New Measure Shows Where Students Learn the
Most
New York Times By EMILY BADGER and KEVIN QUEALY DEC. 5, 2017
CHICAGO — In the Chicago Public Schools system,
enrollment has been declining, the budget is seldom enough, and three in four
children come from low-income homes, a profile that would seemingly consign the
district to low expectations. But students here appear to be learning faster
than those in almost every other school system in the country, according to new
data from researchers at Stanford. The data, based on some 300
million elementary-school test scores across more than 11,000 school districts,
tweaks conventional wisdom in many ways. Some urban and Southern districts are
doing better than data typically suggests. Some wealthy ones don’t look that
effective. Many poor school systems do. This picture, and Chicago’s place in
it, defy how we typically think about wealth and education in America. It’s
true that children in prosperous districts tend
to test well, while children in poorer districts on average score lower. But in this
analysis, which measures how scores grow as student cohorts
move through school, the Stanford researcher Sean Reardon argues that it’s
possible to separate some of the advantages of socioeconomics from what’s
actually happening in schools.
What the
latest research really says about LGBTQ youth in schools
Washington Post Answer Sheet Blog By Valerie
Strauss December 6 at 6:00 AM
What we think we
know about lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning
(LGBTQ) youth in schools is not always accurate, according to research
highlighted in a newly released special edition of the journal of the American
Educational Research Association. This post reveals some of the important
takeaways in the special edition (and you can read it yourself, from links at
the bottom). It was written by Joseph
R. Cimpian is an associate professor of economics and
education policy at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture,
Education, and Human Development and an affiliated associate professor of
public service at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Carolyn
Herrington is a professor of educational policy at the
College of Education at Florida State University and director of the Educational
Policy Center at FSU.
The post-Katrina education reform shook up the
school system; it’s time to do it again
Hechinger Report Degree of Interest Column by ANDRE PERRY December 5, 2017
What if I told you
that 41 percent of the bridges that you drive across are faulty? Or, 41 percent
of hospitals closest to you were deemed failing? Imagine if financial
regulators found that 41 percent of banks regularly mismanage personal
accounts. If any of these hypotheticals were true, you would protest loudly and
demand they be fixed or improved. Well, in New Orleans, 30 of 72 public schools
(or 41 percent) have just received a “D” or an “F” grade, according to the
Louisiana Department of Education. Our Voice Nuestra Voz, a non-profit
education advocacy group in New Orleans, analyzed the school performance scores
data and found that approximately 15,000 students attend these failing schools.
And failure is trending. The website The Lens, which covers
public education in New Orleans, reported
that 65 percent of schools have declined in
performance over the last three years. “Our community needs to be more informed
about these schools’ scores, and CMOs [charter management organizations] need
to be held accountable for their unacceptable performance,” said Mary Moran,
executive director of Our Voice Nuestra Voz, in a press release announcing the
launch of the campaign #30NolaEdWatch,
an initiative to hold these schools accountable.
Register
for New School Director Training in December and January
PSBA Website October 2017
You’ve started a challenging and
exciting new role as a school director. Let us help you narrow the learning
curve! PSBA’s New School Director Training provides school directors with
foundational knowledge about their role, responsibilities and ethical
obligations. At this live workshop, participants will learn about key laws,
policies, and processes that guide school board governance and leadership, and
develop skills for becoming strong advocates in their community. Get the tools
you need from experts during this visually engaging and interactive event.
Choose from any of these 11
locations and dates (note: all sessions are held 8 a.m.-4 p.m., unless
specified otherwise.):
·
Dec. 8, Bedford CTC
·
Dec. 8, Montoursville Area High School
·
Dec. 9, Upper St. Clair High School
·
Dec. 9, West Side CTC
·
Dec. 15, Crawford County CTC
·
Dec. 15, Upper Merion MS (8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m)
·
Dec. 16, PSBA Mechanicsburg
·
Dec. 16, Seneca Highlands IU 9
·
Jan. 6, Haverford Middle School
·
Jan. 13, A W Beattie Career Center
·
Jan. 13, Parkland HS
Fees: Complimentary to All-Access
members or $170 per person for standard membership. All registrations will be
billed to the listed district, IU or CTC. To request billing to
an individual, please contact Michelle Kunkel at michelle.kunkel@psba.org. Registration also includes a
box lunch on site and printed resources.
NSBA 2018
Advocacy Institute February 4 - 6, 2018 Marriott Marquis, Washington D.C.
Register
Now
Come a day early and attend the Equity Symposium!
Join hundreds of public education advocates
on Capitol Hill and help shape the decisions made in Washington D.C. that
directly impact our students. At the 2018 Advocacy Institute, you’ll gain
insight into the most critical issues affecting public education, sharpen your
advocacy skills, and prepare for effective meetings with your representatives. Whether
you are an expert advocator or a novice, attend and experience inspirational
keynote speakers and education sessions featuring policymakers, legal experts
and policy influencers. All designed to help you advocate for your students and
communities.
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