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Keystone
State Education Coalition
Gov. Wolf: less
testing; later testing. Health coverage for 180K Pa. kids on the line as
Congress ignores CHIP
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
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note: we’ve been experiencing some spam filter issues the past few days
interfering with email deliveries. If you did not receive the Roundup emails this
week you can view them at our blog site here, here and here.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by DAN MAJORS dmajors@post-gazette.com 9:38 PM DEC 6, 2017
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey on Wednesday night was tapped by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to serve on the Tax Reform Conference Committee that will hammer out the final tax cut legislation to be sent to the president. Mr. Toomey, who was considered instrumental in the shaping and passing of the tax bill in the Senate last week, will be one of eight Senate Republicans taking part in the negotiations with members of the House of Representatives Conference Committee. The Senate and House have each passed a version of a tax reform bill, but there are substantial differences between them that must be worked out so the two chambers can pass the same bill on to President Donald Trump before Christmas. The House voted to go to conference on Monday. The Senate approved the move Wednesday night in a 51-47 vote along party lines.
Trib Live by DEBRA ERDLEY | Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, 5:06 p.m.
This time, the Grinch delivered. Accompanied by a contingent of about 50 University of Pittsburgh students and faculty members, a costumed Grinch delivered more than 1,000 letters to U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's downtown Pittsburgh office Wednesday afternoon. The group, organized by the Pitt Graduate Student Organizing Committee and the United Steel Workers union, was turned away when members sought permission to take an elevator to Toomey's 14th-floor office to deliver the letters. But a Toomey staffer who said there was no one available to talk with members of the group came down to the security desk to accept the Grinch's deliveries. The letters, penned a week before final exams, sought the Pennsylvania Republican's support for the elimination of provisions in a House version of the sweeping tax bill that many say would harm access to higher education. Among the provisions in question were the elimination of federal tax deductions for interest on student loans and taxing graduate student tuition waivers and tuition remission for faculty children as income. Those provisions were not in the Senate version of the bill but could remain in the final version of the legislation, now pending for reconciliation in a conference committee.
New York Times By ERICA L. GREEN DEC. 4, 2017
WASHINGTON — As Friday night turned into Saturday morning, Vice President Mike Pence cast a tiebreaking vote in the Senate to extend a tax benefit available for higher education to families paying tuition for private elementary and secondary education — or even homeschooling their children. The vote on the amendment by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, was emblematic of the sweeping tax bills entering final negotiations between House and Senate Republicans. Provisions in both measures could change families’ approach to elementary and secondary education, and every type of school stands to benefit except those attended by 90 percent of the nation’s students — public schools. Under the House and Senate bills, families who can afford to put money away for private or sectarian schools each month would be able to watch their savings earn interest and capital gains free of taxation. In the Senate bill, even home schoolers could withdraw up to $10,000 a year for school expenses in their own living room — from tax-favored savings accounts. By contrast, the drastic curtailing of state and local tax deductions in both bills could hamstring local governments’ efforts to finance their public schools.
By Lindsay Lazarski, WHYY December 7, 2017
On day three of the
federal trial contesting Pennsylvania’s congressional map, key Republican
staffers testified that partisan data was used during the 2011 redistricting
process. Behind the scenes, a dispute over the depositions of House Speaker
Michael Turzai (R-Allegheny) and Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati
(R-Jefferson) has bubbled up in court documents. In the case, a group of Pennsylvania voters
claim they have been harmed by partisan gerrymandering and are calling for a
new map in time for the 2018 congressional midterm elections. At the time of
the last redistricting in 2011, Scarnati held his current leadership role and
Turzai was majority leader in the House. In the lead-up to the trial, there was fierce
debate over whether and to what extent the two leaders would participate. Both
hoped to avoid the proceedings altogether by claiming “legislative privilege.” The
court denied
that claim, compelling both to be deposed.
Jason
Addy, 505-5437/@JasonAddyYD Published 1:47 p.m. ET Dec.
6, 2017
Days after celebrating the 25th anniversary
of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in Pennsylvania, advocates are again
pleading with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., and Harrisburg to fund the
program. Congress took no action to reauthorize funding for the federal
program by the Sept. 30 deadline, leaving more than 180,000 Pennsylvania
children at risk of losing their health insurance if lawmakers do not fund the
program soon. Teresa Miller, acting Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department
of Human Services, said state officials are trying to figure out how much money
is still in the program and how far it can be stretched, but she warned
lawmakers are quickly running out of time to save CHIP. “This program will no
longer exist if Congress and the Pennsylvania General Assembly don’t take
action,” Miller said, adding the state’s CHIP funding will only last into the
first quarter of 2018.
“The
program, which costs about $500 million a year in Pennsylvania, receives nearly
90 percent of its funding from the federal government.”
Pennsylvania
official warns CHIP program could end by late March without federal fundingTrib Live by WES VENTEICHER | Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, 6:03 p.m.
About 180,000 Pennsylvania children could lose health insurance early next year if Congress doesn't reauthorize spending for the Children's Health Insurance Program, according to Department of Human Services Secretary Teresa Miller. The state-administered program, known as CHIP, covers children whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but who might not be able to obtain or afford private insurance. Created two decades ago, the program had a history of bipartisan support until this year, when Republicans and Democrats in Congress disagreed over where to get the money to pay for it. “I, for one, never expected us to be in a place where we were so close to seeing the CHIP program end,” Miller said Wednesday. Miller has been holding events to raise awareness about the potential funding shortfall and plans to visit Pittsburgh on Thursday.
Amid a national pushback against standardized tests,
Pennsylvania students will soon take fewer state exams and they will be
administered later in the school year, Gov. Wolf announced Wednesday. “We were
learning to the test, we were teaching to the test” too often, the governor
said during a stop at Colonial Middle School in Plymouth Meeting. “That’s not
the way learning is supposed to go. This is about putting the focus more to
classroom teaching.” So next spring, the start of the administration of the
Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, known as the PSSAs, will
be moved back one week, to April 9. And beginning in 2019, the exam window
will move to late April, with districts given greater flexibility in when they
choose to give students the exams. The exam window will also shrink from three
to two weeks. Spring break now often falls in the middle of the PSSA window,
causing scheduling headaches and throwing off test-takers, teachers say. The
change is likely to affect more than one million students in public schools
across the commonwealth. Students in third through eighth grade in
traditional public and charter schools take the tests annually.
Local school officials cheer Wolf decision to scale
back standardized testing
Tribune Democrat Staff
and wire reports December 6, 2017
HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania’s governor announced
Wednesday changes to the state’s regimen of standardized tests that are
designed to reduce their impact and length. The Pennsylvania System of School
Assessment, the state’s standardized testing system, will last two weeks next
year, down from three, said Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. The testing will also be
moved to later in the school year, giving students a few more weeks of learning
beforehand. The tests themselves would also be shorter – at a
time there’s been a national cry to reduce the importance of such exams for
public school students, state officials said. David Volkman, the state
Education Department’s executive deputy secretary, said in a news release that
the agency was responding to pressure to refocus on learning. “This improved
schedule, along with the changes we made to the structure of the tests earlier
this year, will address those concerns while maintaining the accuracy of the
assessment,” Volkman said.
Delaying
state exams to later in the school year draws praise from educators
Penn Live By Jan Murphy jmurphy@pennlive.com Updated 6:21
AM; Posted 6:20 AM
Not only will elementary and middle school students
spend less time taking state exams, next year they will take them closer to the
end of the school year. Gov. Tom Wolf delivered that bit of good news about the
high-stakes Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams in math, English
literacy and science given to third through eighth graders at a Montgomery
County middle school on Wednesday. "We are continuing to respond to the
concerns of students, parents and teachers about the amount of classroom time
spent of standardized tests," he said to those gathered at Colonial Middle
School. "After reducing the classroom time devoted to the PSSA and moving
the test window to later in the school year, students and teachers will have
more classroom time to focus on learning before taking the test."
Efforts to
reduce standardized testing succeeded in many school districts in 2017. Here’s
why and how.
Washington Post Answer Sheet Blog By Valerie
Strauss December 6 at 1:51 PM I recently wrote about a new book by Harvard University professor Daniel Koretz, “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better,” which details exactly what the title suggests: how the standardized-test-based accountability movement in public education pursued by Republican and Democratic administrations has failed to improve schools. Parents, students and public education advocates have been telling policymakers for years about the many problems with excessive high-stakes standardized testing, including narrowed curriculum and evaluation systems that assessed teachers on the scores of students they didn’t have. While there is still a great deal of it in districts around the country, 2017 saw some reductions in the amount of testing as well as the high stakes attached to student scores. This post discusses what happened in this arena in the past year. It was written by Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a nonprofit group known as FairTest that works to end the abuse of standardized tests, and by Lisa Guisbond, assessment reform analyst at FairTest.
Rating
agency holds Pa.'s credit ranking steady with an iffy outlook
Fitch, a global credit rating
agency, maintained the ranking on Pennsylvania at AA-minus, meaning the risk of
it defaulting on loans is very low. Penn Live By Jan Murphy jmurphy@pennlive.com Updated 12:45 AM; Posted Dec 6, 7:37 PM
After seeing Pennsylvania's credit rating got knocked down a notch in Standard & Poor's rankings in the fall, having another major credit rating hold the state's ranking steady at AA-minus on its general obligation bonds is a sigh of relief. But don't exhale too much. Fitch Ratings, in its latest rankings released on Tuesday, removed its "rating watch negative" (meaning a good probability that its ranking would be downgraded) and assigned Pennsylvania a "negative outlook," meaning it still could be downgraded but it is not as imminent. In particular, Fitch's analysis cites the state's rising fixed costs particularly in education and Medicaid, modest revenue growth, need for recurring revenue, and a "particularly contentious decision-making environment," as the reasons behind its ranking decisions.
“As it stands, Topper's bill covered the
state's two largest insurance programs, Medicare and CHIP, the Childrens Health
Insurance Program.”
Transgender
services ban gets sidelined after Pa. lawmakers learn their insurance covers
the same
A belated discovery that their
own health care coverage pays for gender reassignment services has brought a
temporary halt to legislative attempts to bar Pennsylvania's Childrens Health
Insurance Program from paying for such services.
Penn Live By Charles Thompson cthompson@pennlive.com Updated 12:46
AM; Posted Dec 6, 3:44 PM
An effort to bar the use of state taxpayer dollars
to pay for sex change surgeries and other transgender services in Pennsylvania
ran aground this week after lawmakers were confronted with an inconvenient
truth: Their own, taxpayer-funded insurance plan covers the very same things. House
Bill 1933's prime sponsor, Rep. Jesse Topper, confirmed Wednesday he has pulled
his bill back for amendments that would extend the proposed ban on transgender
services to all tax-funded coverages.
Philly
launches effort to expand K-12 computer science classes
WHYY By Taylor
Allen December 6, 2017
The Philadelphia
School District is launching a new effort to bring computer science classes to
all K-12 schools in the city. The project, called CS4Philly, is aimed at
encouraging students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and
math. It is the brainchild of Philly startup CEO Bob Moul, whose ultimate
goal is to expand tech education across
Pennsylvania. Mayor Jim Kenney said he wants Philadelphia
students to be prepared for good-paying jobs that will boost the city’s
economy. “As a city, we pledge, to ensure that all Philadelphia children and
youth can become full, digital citizens with equity and access to the digital
economy,” he said. Superintendent William Hite said the district has already
started supplying schools with more computers, adapting curricula and urging
students to take advantage of more online learning resources.
Saucon
Valley school board approves handbook with 'softened' anti-discrimination
language
Michelle
Merlin Contact
Reporter Of The Morning Call December 7, 2017
The Saucon Valley School Board unanimously approved
a high school handbook Tuesday that includes an anti-discrimination section in
a move that follows racial incidents last year. Despite the vote, some board
members had concerns about the handbook. One criticized it for softer language
than past drafts, and another criticized language to recognize “any protected
classes.” Previous drafts of the handbook included more
specific language to punish racist behavior. Last month the board reviewed a
version that included a “hate speech” section that referenced a list of five derogative words that a
student group proposed banning. But the draft didn’t specify which words would
be banned. Another draft that was
online Monday designated racial, ethnic or protected-class intimidation as
behavior that could warrant discipline. But the final version did not have that
section. District officials said such offenses would be covered by the part of
the handbook that deals with harassment and intimidation.
Too Many Children in California Can’t Read, Lawsuit Claims
New York Timmes By CHRISTINE HAUSER DEC. 6, 2017
Parents and educators at struggling schools in
California say students there are not reading well, and lawyers this week sued
the state, arguing that it had failed to provide the children with the
resources they needed to learn. The lawsuit
was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday on behalf of
parents, teachers and students at three schools — La Salle Avenue Elementary
School in Los Angeles; Van Buren Elementary School in Stockton; and Children of
Promise Preparatory Academy, a charter school in Inglewood. It said California
had failed to follow up on its own report by state literacy experts that found
there was a “critical need” to address the skills and development of students,
particularly those who are learning English, have disabilities, are economically
disadvantaged, or are African-American or Hispanic. The suit, announced in a
statement, is the first in the United States to seek recognition of the
constitutional right to literacy, the lawyers said. It alleges that the
state failed to intervene when students achieved low proficiency rates
in reading and fell behind at the three schools, which are among the lowest
performing in the state.
Deutsch29 Blog by Mercedes Schneider December 5,
2017
The December 2017 issue of Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis (an American Educational Research
Association–AERA– publication) includes a
study entitled, “The Effects of School Turnaround in
Tennessee’s Achievement School District [ASD] and Innovation Zones [iZones].” Below
is the TN ASD logo– which
ironically represents “impossibility in its purest form.” Interestingly, the study is funded by both
Tennessee’s Race to the Top (RttT)
grant from the US Dept. of Ed. and the Walton Family
Foundation. The principal finding is that state takeover of Tennessee schools
in order to “turn around” such schools is a bust, and it is better to allow the
schools to remain with the home district and provide additional resources to
the district in order to “raise student achievement” (which, of course, means
to raise test scores).
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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