Started in November 2010, daily postings from the Keystone State
Education Coalition now reach more than 4050 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, school solicitors,
principals, charter school leaders, 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
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These daily emails are archived and searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
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If any of your colleagues would
like to be added to the email list please have them send their name, title and
affiliation to KeystoneStateEdCoalition@gmail.com
PA Ed Policy Roundup for Jan. 16, 2020
“Pennsylvania was 47th overall in the opportunity gap between
black and white students, 47th in the gap between Hispanic and white students
and 46th in the gap between economically disadvantaged students and their
wealthier peers. RFA attributed these disparities to enrollment patterns in
Pennsylvania. In a research brief, analysts said students of color in
Pennsylvania are disproportionately clustered in “high poverty schools” that
“provide less access to educational opportunities.” A separate 2016 study found that Pennsylvania has some
of the starkest racial and socioeconomic divides among its school districts, of
which there are 500. Another study concluded that the state’s system for
funding education has systemic racial bias that particularly hurts Black and
Hispanic students in poverty.”
Pa. provides some of the worst opportunities for students
of color, reports say
WITF by Avi Wolfman-Arent/Keystone
Crossroads JANUARY 15, 2020 | 4:57 PM
(Philadelphia)
— Students of color in Pennsylvania are far less likely than their white peers
to have access to small classes, certified teachers and advanced coursework,
according to a pair of new studies. The so-called “access” gap in Pennsylvania
is among the nation’s largest, both studies claim, distinguishing the Keystone
state as one of the America’s worst when it comes to educational equity for
poor and non-white students. The findings come from two research projects
released this month, both of which use a data set released by the federal government in
2018. This week, Philadelphia-based nonprofit
Research for Action unveiled an “Educational Opportunity Dashboard” that looks
at high school students across the country and tries to determine whether they
attend schools with quality educators, good school climate and challenging
curriculum. From those three categories, RFA generated an “average opportunity
score” for each state — a composite of factors such as student-teacher ratio,
suspension rate, absenteeism rate, teacher experience and access to Advanced
Placement classes. Pennsylvania’s “average opportunity score”
for high school students of color ranked 48th nationally, meaning RFA found a
significantly larger-than-normal gap between the opportunities granted to white
students and the opportunities granted to students of color.
“But if it came down to it, and we were forced to pay
out-of-pocket to keep attending our current cyber charter, I would rather
struggle financially to continue sending my children to the school that’s
actually working for them than to feel trapped within the hopeless failure of a
district that isn’t working at all.”
Cyber charters transformed my struggling kids. Why do Pa.
politicians want to change my choice? | Opinion
Annette Mercado, For the Inquirer January 16,
2020
Annette Mercado is a Philadelphia resident
and the parent of three cyber charter students.
I am a parent and a taxpayer. Unfortunately,
my elected officials don’t always believe that makes me qualified to choose the
best school for my children. They’re wrong.
For parents like me, who choose to send our
children to cyber charter schools instead of the traditional public schools
that were failing them, we’re always wondering just how much longer we’ll have
the freedom to keep making this choice. Every few years, Pennsylvania
politicians seem to rediscover the topic of cyber charter schools and raise new
concerns about whether the students who attend them are really getting the
taxpayers’ money’s worth. The newest legislation that has cyber charter parents
worried comes from State Representative Curt Sonney, the new chairman of the
House Education Committee. His proposed House Bill 1897 would
require all 500 Pennsylvania school districts to create and manage their own
cyber schools. It overlaps with Senate Bill 34, proposed
in January by State Senator Judy Schwank, which would require families to pay
out-of-pocket tuition if they want to send their children to any cyber charter
school other than the one operated by their local district. When combined, the
purpose of these bills is clear: They seek to force parents to send their
children to schools within their existing district, rather than granting them
the freedom to know what’s best for their own child. This is alarming,
especially for parents like me.
“The taxpayers are being fleeced by this model in most cases,”
said Greg Richmond, CEO of the National Association of Charter School
Authorizers, a group that says it supports high-quality charters.
Reprise March 2019: Are Pa. school districts paying too
much for cyber charter students?
Inquirer by Maddie Hanna, Updated: March 14, 2019
Moving to Northeast Philadelphia three years
ago, Rebecca Penglase had reservations about sending her son to a traditional
school. Caleb, then 7, needed speech therapy and had experienced bullying at
his school in New Jersey — a situation Penglase wanted to avoid. She was also
concerned that a cousin’s child with speech issues was placed in a
special-education class in a Philadelphia public school. “I didn’t want that to
happen for my son. I didn’t want him to fall in the cracks,” Penglase said. She
enrolled him in a cyber charter school, which enables him to do his schoolwork
at home. More than 34,000 children across Pennsylvania attend cyber charter
schools that are managed by independent operators. Tuition is free, but school
districts pay the bills. A cyber charter student costs a district the same as
one attending a brick-and-mortar charter. Penglase and other parents say the
cybers are refuges from what they view as less-than-ideal learning environments
of some conventional classrooms. But the funding system, along with the academic struggles of cyber
charters, is at the core of the years-long
debate over whether they are wise investments for taxpayers.
Catasauqua School Board denies charter for Innovative
Arts Academy Charter School
By PETER BLANCHARD THE MORNING CALL |
JAN 15, 2020 | 7:15 AM
In a unanimous decision Tuesday night, the
Catasauqua Area School Board voted against renewing the charter for Innovative
Arts Academy Charter School, putting the school’s future in question. The
troubled school for grades six through 12 has been marred by poor test scores
and bad publicity since its inception in 2016. The first incident involved an
anonymous and unauthorized mailer that promoted the school’s career-based
curriculum and highlighted negative things about the Bethlehem Area School
District. A couple weeks later, before the school had even opened, its CEO
abruptly resigned, accusing the school of “unethical practices.” In 2018, two former teachers filed a lawsuit against
the school, claiming their contracts were not renewed because they criticized
the administration. Catasauqua school administrators have continually cited
data showing the charter school underperformed in all subjects in standardized
assessments, with an average growth index in 2018 that was among the worst in
the state. In addition, a majority of the academy’s students come from the
Allentown School District, despite the original charter expecting 75% of its
students to come from the Catasauqua Area School District.
A Chesco school district is in ‘a fight for our lives’ as
students flock to charters
Inquirer by Maddie Hanna, Updated: January 15, 2020-
8:48 PM
The tension between traditional public schools
and the charter schools they fund has spurred debate for
years, in Pennsylvania and nationally. In one Chester County community, the
situation has escalated to what school district leaders say is a battle for
survival. The Coatesville Area School District has been urging parents to
contact state lawmakers and press for changes to Pennsylvania’s charter funding
rules that it says are draining the district of critical dollars. At the
Collegium and Avon Grove charter schools — which draw students from various
districts and serve more than 2,500 Coatesville students, close to half of the
district’s enrollment — leaders have also been rallying families, accusing the
district of circulating misinformation. The sides disagree on how much
Coatesville, one of the poorer districts in affluent Chester County, owed the
charters in the last school year. But the debate stretches beyond a single
budget, as the district grapples with how to reverse a prolonged exodus of
students to charters while facing a gaping budget hole in the year ahead. “Plainly
put, we are in a fight for our lives,” interim Superintendent Richard Dunlap
said in a recent letter to staff, parents, and taxpayers.
CASD, charter schools spar in funding dispute
Pottstown Mercury By Lucas Rodgers, Content
Producer January 16, 2020
CALN – The Coatesville Area School District
(CASD) is facing a potential deficit of $14.1 million in its budget for the
2020-21 school year. Interim Superintendent Dr. Richard Dunlap said during a
school board meeting Tuesday evening that there are several variables affecting
the district’s budget, but currently the two highest costs for the district are
special education and payments to charter schools. He said there are currently
5,453 students enrolled in CASD, and 3,054 students attending charter schools. State
law requires school districts to make tuition payments to charter schools based
on the number of students from the district who opt to attend charter schools. Charter
school payments have long been a contentious issue in the district, and
tensions have recently flared up even more as district residents have been told
conflicting stories in emails and on social media regarding a funding dispute
between the district and two charter schools: Avon Grove Charter School (AGCS)
and Collegium Charter School (CCS).
Each side in the dispute has been accused of
spreading misinformation.
I work at a Philly school closed by asbestos. We’re fed
up. | Opinion
Andrew Knips, For The Inquirer Updated: January
15, 2020 - 7:00 AM
Andrew Knips is a teacher leadership coach in
Philadelphia with over a decade of serving Philadelphia students and school
leaders.
At 8:30 a.m., one week before Christmas,
nearly 660 students excitedly hurried up the steps to Alexander McClure
Elementary School. The next day, they would have needed a hazmat suit to enter.
On Dec. 19, Alexander McClure Elementary, the Philadelphia public school I’ve
worked in for the last three years, was temporarily shut down because McClure
staff and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers’ environmental science
director identified 10 areas of
damaged asbestos. The quality of our public schools is an
equity issue. The night and day difference between a public school and a
private school should make everyone scream with frustration. No child — no, not
even your child — deserves a better education than anybody else.
Meet the woman whose new job is to help Philadelphia kids
Inquirer by Laura McCrystal, Updated: January 15, 2020-
9:53 PM
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney wants to
improve city services for children, and he’s created a new office to do it. The
Office of Children and Families will oversee existing city departments that
serve kids, including the mayor’s signature pre-K and community schools
programs, and will work closely with the School District of Philadelphia and
other city departments to find ways to improve those services. Kenney signed an
executive order creating the office last week, hours after beginning his second term, and
appointed Cynthia Figueroa, who has
served as the city’s Department of Human Services (DHS) commissioner since
2016, as deputy mayor for children and families. “When you think about the
barriers that kids and families face, it’s not only going to be the academic
achievement gap,” Figueroa said in an interview this week. “It’s what’s going
on in the home that’s impacting the achievement gap that also needs to be addressed.
So instead of doing those in silos, the best interest for our families in
Philadelphia is to do that in a collective way.”
Why Taxpayers Should Not Be Forced to Support Private
Religious Education
The Century Foundation by RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG DIRECTOR OF
K–12 EQUITY AND SENIOR FELLOW JANUARY 14, 2020
America is engaged in “the world’s most
radical experiment in democracy,” Heather McGhee of Demos notes, because we
are “a nation of ancestral strangers that has to find connection even as we
grow more diverse every day.” Our histories start in countries all over the
globe, with different languages and different faiths, and yet somehow we have
continued to work on forging a common democracy. If conservatives have their
way, a new Supreme Court case to enable public funding of private religious
education could make that work of forging social cohesion all the more
difficult. More than any other institution, our country’s system of public
education has provided the glue that holds our nation together. Nine in ten
American children attend public
schools, which take all comers, no matter their race, religion, or income. To
be sure, public schools need to become better integrated by race and economic
status—a goal that The Century Foundation has championed for
almost a quarter century—but American public schools are still the predominant
driver of our national experiment, taking people from all walks of life and
teaching them what they have in common as Americans.
IDEA Turns 45
The landmark law changed public education, but funding challenges persist
The landmark law changed public education, but funding challenges persist
NSBA’s American School Board Journal February
03, 2020
The Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act mandates that districts provide the access and support special education
students need for a high-quality education, but many districts have trouble
closing the monetary gap between what the federal government promises to fund
and what Congress actually delivers. When planning the special education
department budget for Pennsylvania’s Upper St. Clair School District, Amy
Pfender learned early to never count on the promised funding from the federally
mandated Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). “You can’t really
anticipate what the funding will be from year to year,” says Pfender, assistant
to the superintendent of the suburban Pittsburgh district and, until recently,
its director of student support services. “You have kind of an average that has
come in,” she says, “but even that can fluctuate.” Pfender remembers having to
remove staff positions from proposed budgets because their salaries were
dependent on IDEA funds. As it turned out, “that money was not coming in.”
Allegheny County Legislative Forum on Education March 12
by Allegheny Intermediate Unit Thu, March
12, 2020 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT
Join us on March 12 at 7:00 pm for the
Allegheny Intermediate Unit's annual Allegheny County Legislative Forum. The
event will feature a discussion with state lawmakers on a variety of issues
impacting public schools. We hope you will join us and be part of the
conversation about education in Allegheny County.
Five compelling reasons for .@PSBA .@PASA .@PAIU school leaders to
come to the Capitol for Advocacy Day on March 23rd:
Charter Reform
Cyber Charter Reform
Basic Ed Funding
Special Ed Funding
PLANCON
Register at http://mypsba.org
School Leaders: Register today for @PSBA @PASA @PAIU Advocacy Day at the
Capitol on March 23rd and you could be the lucky winner of my school board
salary for the entire year. Register now at http://mypsba.org
For more information: https://www.psba.org/event/advocacy-day-2020/
Charter
Schools; Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
PENNSYLVANIA BULLETIN PROPOSED RULEMAKING DEPARTMENT
OF EDUCATION [ 22 PA. CODE CH. 711 ]
PSBA New and Advanced
School Director Training in Dec & Jan
Additional sessions now being offered in
Bucks and Beaver Counties
Do you want
high-impact, engaging training that newly elected and reseated school directors
can attend to be certified in new and advanced required training? PSBA has been
supporting new school directors for more than 50 years by enlisting statewide
experts in school law, finance and governance to deliver a one-day foundational
training. This year, we are adding a parallel track of sessions for those who
need advanced school director training to meet their compliance requirements.
These sessions will be delivered by the same experts but with advanced content.
Look for a compact evening training or a longer Saturday session at a location
near you. All sites will include one hour of trauma-informed training required
by Act 18 of 2019. Weekend sites will include an extra hour for a legislative
update from PSBA’s government affairs team.
New School
Director Training
Week Nights:
Registration opens 3:00 p.m., program starts 3:30 p.m. -9:00 p.m., dinner with
break included
Saturdays: Registration opens at 8:00 a.m., program starts at 9:00 a.m. -3:30 p.m., lunch with break included
Saturdays: Registration opens at 8:00 a.m., program starts at 9:00 a.m. -3:30 p.m., lunch with break included
Advanced School
Director Training
Week Nights:
Registration with dinner provided opens at 4:30 p.m., program starts 5:30 p.m.
-9:00 p.m.
Saturdays: Registration opens at 10:00 a.m., program starts at 11:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m., lunch with break included
Saturdays: Registration opens at 10:00 a.m., program starts at 11:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m., lunch with break included
Locations
and dates
- Saturday, January 25,
2020 — Bucks County IU 22, 705 N Shady Retreat Rd, Doylestown, PA 18901
- Monday, February 3,
2020 — Beaver Valley IU 27, 147
Poplar Avenue, Monaca, PA 15061
Congress, Courts, and
a National Election: 50 Million Children’s Futures Are at Stake. Be their
champion at the 2020 Advocacy Institute.
NSBA Advocacy
Institute Feb. 2-4, 2020 Marriot Marquis, Washington, D.C.
Join school leaders
from across the country on Capitol Hill, Feb. 2-4, 2020 to influence the
legislative agenda & shape decisions that impact public schools. Check out
the schedule & more at https://nsba.org/Events/Advocacy-Institute
All school
leaders are invited to attend Advocacy Day at the state Capitol in
Harrisburg. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA), Pennsylvania
Association of Intermediate Units (PAIU) and the Pennsylvania Association of
School Administrators (PASA) are partnering together to strengthen our advocacy
impact. The day will center around meetings with legislators to discuss
critical issues affecting public education. Click here for more information or register
at http://www.mypsba.org/
School
directors can register online now by logging in to myPSBA. If you need
assistance logging in and registering contact Alysha Newingham, Member Data
System Administrator at alysha.newingham@psba.org
Register now for
Network for Public Education Action National Conference in Philadelphia March
28-29, 2020
Registration, hotel
information, keynote speakers and panels:
Any comments contained herein are my comments, alone, and
do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other person or organization
that I may be affiliated with.
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