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PA Ed Policy Roundup for July
24, 2014:
Community
Schools model gaining traction as other reforms addressing achievement gaps
& income inequality have sputtered
Basic Education Funding
Commission to Hold Organizational Meeting
Senator Pat Browne's website July 23, 2014
WHAT: The Basic Education
Funding Commission will hold its inaugural and organizational meeting. Created
by Act 51 of 2014, the 15-member commission is tasked with developing and
recommending to the General Assembly a new formula for distributing state
funding for basic education to Pennsylvania
school districts.
WHO: Members
of the Basic Education Funding Commission.
WHEN: Thursday, July 24,
2014 at 1:30 p.m.
WHERE: East Wing, Room 8 E-B State
Capitol, Harrisburg
Note: We invite the
media to attend and cover this event.
Contact:
Vicki Wilken (Senator Browne) vwilken@pasen.gov – 717-787-1349
Matt Moyer (Senator Browne) mmoyer@pasen.gov – 610-349-2879
Brian Kadunc (Representative Vereb) bkadunc@pahousegop.com – 717-705-7164
Tim Eller (Secretary Dumaresq) tieller@pa.gov – 717-783-9802
Matt Moyer (Senator Browne) mmoyer@pasen.gov – 610-349-2879
Brian Kadunc (Representative Vereb) bkadunc@pahousegop.com – 717-705-7164
Tim Eller (Secretary Dumaresq) tieller@pa.gov – 717-783-9802
Thursday at 1:30 pm on PCN+:
Basic Education Funding Commission Meeting
PCN TV website By broller on
Jul 23, 2014
Basic Education Funding Commission Meeting
The Basic Education Funding Commission will hold its inaugural
and organizational meeting. Created by Act 51 of 2014, the 15-member commission
is tasked with developing and recommending to the General Assembly a new
formula for distributing state funding for basic education to Pennsylvania school districts.
New Law Aims to Improve Basic
Education Funding Formula
A Conversation with
Senator Brubaker On July 23, 2014
While education funding
is often a point of serious debate in the state Capitol, there is broad
bipartisan agreement that each school district should receive its fair share of
state funding based on the actual needs of students. I recently supported
passage of a new law that will help ensure each of the Commonwealth’s 501
school districts has the resources necessary in order to ensure a quality
educational experience for young people.
The new law, Act 51 of
2014, will create a bipartisan commission to study the current method for
distributing education funding to school districts. The Basic Education Funding
Commission will be responsible for reviewing factors such as a school
district’s enrollment, market value/personal income aid ratio, geographic price
differences, equalized millage rate, number of students below the poverty rate,
and local support. After completing a thorough review of current practices, the
Commission will make recommendations for the creation of a new statewide
funding formula.
The path forward: A Q&A
with civil rights lawyer Michael Churchill of PILCOP
the notebook By Bill
Hangley Jr. on Jul 23, 2014
04:24 PM
Michael Churchill has
worked as an attorney with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia for
almost four decades, winning widespread recognition as one of the region’s most
effective education advocates. Twenty
years ago, he helped bring a landmark desegregation case to what he thought was
a successful conclusion, when Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith ordered the Philadelphia School District
But what followed was a
state takeover and a host of experiments in private management and school
choice, and system-wide inequities persist to this day. We asked Churchill to
reflect on the current budget proposal, its potential impact on schools, and
the legal strategies that could be used to stabilize the District’s finances
for the long term.
The path forward: A Q&A
with Larry Jones of Richard Allen Prep Charter
the notebook By Bill
Hangley Jr. on Jul 22, 2014
09:41 AM
For more than a decade,
Larry Jones has been a prominent supporter of Philadelphia ’s charter schools, particularly
the smaller, community-based variety that proliferated in the wake of the 2001
state takeover. He has run the
350-student Richard
Allen Preparatory
Charter School
"At public hearings last month and
this week, some parents of district-operated schools opposed the expansion,
including Pamela Harbin, whose two children attend Pittsburgh
Liberty
About 28 percent of ECS students are
eligible for subsidized lunch, compared to 71 percent in district schools.
About 21 percent of students are black, compared to 54 percent in district
schools. A state profile indicates zero percent are English language learners,
compared to about 3 percent in district schools."
Pittsburgh school board
rejects charter school expansion at Frick Park
By Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette July 23, 2014 9:11 PM
Pittsburgh Public
Schools board has unanimously rejected expansion plans by the Environmental
Charter School at Frick Park that would have cost the district as much as $11
million a year and unanimously approved changes proposed by Manchester Academic
Charter School and Academy Charter School.
"It's a missed opportunity for the city of Pittsburgh ," said Jon McCann, CEO of
ECS, in an interview after the vote. He vowed an appeal to the state Charter
School Appeal Board.
House Democratic Policy
Committee meets in Monessen
Trib Live By Chris
Buckley Wednesday, July 23, 2014,
12:56 a.m.
Members of the state House Democratic Policy Committee on Tuesday blamed Gov. Tom Corbett's administration for cuts in education funding they claim are hurting local school districts.
Members of the state House Democratic Policy Committee on Tuesday blamed Gov. Tom Corbett's administration for cuts in education funding they claim are hurting local school districts.
It was an opinion
shared by local educational leaders who attended a meeting the committee
conducted at Monessen
High School
State Rep. R. Ted
Harhai, D-Monessen, said the focus Tuesday was “education as an economic
engine.” “Our goal today at this hearing
– which focuses on the symbiotic relationship between education and economic
development – is to show how our area and other regions of Pennsylvania have
been adversely impacted by inadequate education funding as we strive to spur
economic development,” Harhai said
The politics of pensions
= annoyance
JOHN BAER, DAILY
NEWS POLITICAL COLUMNIST Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 12:16 AM
KNOW WHAT'S annoying about the politics of pensions? Everything.
Gov. Corbett is in week two of a race around the state -
scheduled in Trevose, Bucks County, today; Dresher, Montco, tomorrow -
browbeating the Legislature for not passing pension "reform."
Everywhere he goes he cites "a pension crisis"
causing property taxes to rise. And he
pretends his mostly small-town tour has nothing to do with his re-election
effort because, after all, that would be wrong since he put people in prison
for using taxpayer resources for political campaigns.
About that $4 billion in PA school district
reserves……
MISREADING OF NUMBERS IS
A PROBLEM
Jean Jacques Crawb's Blog Posted on July 24, 2014by jeanjacquescrawb
For you accountants out there, you know what an unencumbered
fund balance is. For those of you are bolloxed by those words, here‘s the
scoop. After you’ve gotten all the dough and paid all of the bills, if there is
money left over, that’s the unencumbered (or unassigned) fund balance.
InPennsylvania ,
schools are not allowed to have a fund balance more than 8%-12% depending on
the size of their budgets. The smaller the budget the higher the percent. So,
those with higher expenditures have a lower percent they are allowed to keep
for their fund balance.
In
Community Schools: Reps.
Steny Hoyer, Aaron Schock Seek Bipartisan Support for Bill to Fund Full-Service
Community Schools: 'America
Real Clear Education By Emmeline Zhao
July 23, 2014
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (MD) and Rep. Aaron Schock
(R-IL) are slated to introduce legislation today that will authorize funding
for public K-12 schools that bring together various educational and social
service programs.
The Full-Service Community Schools Act of 2014 seeks to offer
five-year grants from the Department of Education to localities that implement
the collaborative schooling model. It’s a model that’s been around for decades
but has only recently gained traction as other reforms to address achievement
gaps and income inequality have sputtered.
Full-service community schools seek to help students learn and
succeed while strengthening family and community involvement. They are public
schools that integrate in-house health and social services for children in
efforts to better prepare them for learning by improving their physical,
emotional, and social well-being, and include partnerships with community
organizations and services that offer programs for parental education and
participation in student learning. Full-service community schools tend to also
serve as community centers that provide after-school and early childhood
education. There are 21 community schools in New York City ,
64 in and around Portland , Ore. ,
and 31 in Tulsa , Okla.
Community Schools: Bipartisan
House Bill Would Boost Community Schools
Education Week Politics
K-12 Blog By on July
23, 2014 1:41 PM
Coming on the heels of several bipartisan, education-related
bills making their way through the House, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of
Maryland and Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., hopped on the bandwagon Wednesday and
unveiled a co-sponsored measure to boost community schools.
The bill would provide grants to school districts to fund
what's known as "full-service community school models," public elementary
or secondary schools that partner with non-profit organizations to provide
wraparound services, such health care, job training, counseling and nutrition
services. Priority for the grants would be given to high-poverty schools and
rural districts.
It's unclear how much funding the duo plans to seek for its
community-school proposal, an important detail if they plan to round up support
from additional GOP members.
"Full-service community schools are a critical tool in the
effort to close the achievement gap and ensure that we are graduating students
who are college- and career-ready," said Hoyer in a statement.
Want more
info on Community Schools?
The University
of Arkansas Rutgers University analyzes the
University of Arkansas Arkansas study “shamelessly” and “knowingly”
uses bogus data. The Arkansas
study is meant to refute an earlier critique of their work by Baker.
Why Do Americans Stink at
Math?
New York Times By ELIZABETH GREEN JULY 23, 2014
When Akihiko Takahashi was a junior in college in 1978, he was
like most of the other students at his university in suburban Tokyo . He had a vague sense of wanting to
accomplish something but no clue what that something should be. But that spring
he met a man who would become his mentor, and this relationship set the course
of his entire career.
Takeshi Matsuyama was an elementary-school teacher, but like a
small number of instructors in Japan ,
he taught not just young children but also college students who wanted to
become teachers. At the university-affiliated elementary school where Matsuyama taught, he
turned his classroom into a kind of laboratory, concocting and trying out new
teaching ideas. When Takahashi met him, Matsuyama
was in the middle of his boldest experiment yet — revolutionizing the way
students learned math by radically changing the way teachers taught it.
"And in case we forget, Mathematica’s Kindergartners’ Skills at School Entry: An
Analysis of the ECLS-K reminds us. This study is interesting
because it does not look just at the usual race/ethnicity and income factors.
Instead, it focuses on four specific “risk factors”: “the child lives in a
single-parent household, the child’s mother has less than a high school
education, the child’s household income is below the federal poverty line, and
the primary language spoken in the home is not English.” You may be surprised to see that nearly
half—44%—of entering kindergartners face at least one of these risk
factors:"
“Houston
Core Knowledge Blog by Lisa Hansel July 23rd, 2014
We do indeed have a crisis on our hands, but year after year we
fail to diagnose and address it. With 21st century skills,
learning styles, comprehension strategies, blame-the-teacher “reforms,” and
dozens of other fads clouding our thinking, research-driven common sense
improvements get little attention. It’s
frustrating, but our Core Knowledge community is dedicated to spreading the
word on rigorous academics. For anyone out there who needs yet more evidence of
the desperate need for building broad knowledge and skills, two new reports are
worth examining.
“Just the facts, ma’am”
Cold, hard facts are what we get from ACT and Mathematica
Policy Research. We learn (yet again) that there are massive disparities in
preparation for college and kindergarten.
ACT’s The
Condition of College & Career Readiness tackles the high
school problem with stark graphics. The one below, showing the massive gaps
among youth by race and ethnicity, is especially striking:
University
of Pennsylvania Graduate School
The National Writing Project's
resources for teachers\Inspiring Students to Write
The Philadelphia Writing project
(PhilWP), a renowned local site of the National Writing Project, teaches
writing and literacy as critical tools for learning. Penn GSE professor Dianne
Waff works with teachers to move them and their students toward
writing-intensive lives that connect learning, high student achievement, and
personal growth. The following tips come
from experienced PhilWP Teacher Consultants (TCs), who offer ideas to encourage
students to write and develop a love for words and creative expression.
BATS DC
Rally July 28 10 am
The Badass Teachers Association (BATs), an activist
organization of over 50,000 teachers will be holding a rally in Washington D.C. USDOE
Plaza
Bucks Lehigh
EduSummit Monday Aug 11th and Tuesday Aug 12th
Location: Southern Lehigh High School5800 Main Street , Center Valley , PA
18034
Time: 8 AM - 3 PM Each Day(Registration starts at 7:30 AM. Keynote starts at 8:00 AM.)
Location: Southern Lehigh High School
Time: 8 AM - 3 PM Each Day(Registration starts at 7:30 AM. Keynote starts at 8:00 AM.)
The Bucks Lehigh EduSummit is a
collaboratively organized and facilitated two day professional learning
experience coordinated by educators in the Quakertown Community School District , Palisades School District, Salisbury
Township School District, Southern Lehigh School District, Bucks County IU, and Carbon Lehigh IU, which are all located in
northern Bucks county and southern Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Teachers in
other neighboring districts are welcome to attend as well! The purpose of the
EduSummit is to collaborate, connect, share, and learn together for the benefit
of our kids. Focus areas include: Educational Technology, PA Core, Social
Media, Best Practices, etc.
http://buckslehighedusummit2014.wikispaces.com/Home
http://buckslehighedusummit2014.wikispaces.com/Home
Educational Collaborators Pennsylvania Summit
The Educational Collaborators, in partnership with the Wilson School
District
Pre-K for PA has supporters
all over the greater Philadelphia region who want to help ensure all three and
four year-old children can access quality pre-K.
We need your help -- join an upcoming phone bank. Join
a fun gathering of like minds in Philadelphia and Conshohocken on
Wednesday evenings throughout the summer. We are calling fellow Pre-K for
PA supporters to build local volunteer teams.
Call a Pre-K Friend in Philly:
UnitedWay Building 1709 Ben Franklin Parkway
Wed July 30, 5-7 PM
United
Wed July 30, 5-7 PM
Call a Pre-K Friend in Mont Co:
Anne's House242 Barren
Hill Road
Wed July 30, 5-7pm
Anne's House
Wed July 30, 5-7pm
RSVP: http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/51084/c/10476/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=9390
EPLC Education Issues
Workshop for Legislative Candidates, Campaign Staff, and Interested Voters -
Harrisburg July 31
Register Now! EPLC will again be hosting
an Education Issues Workshop for Legislative Candidates, Campaign Staff,
and Interested Voters. This nonpartisan, one-day program will take place
on Thursday, July 31 in Harrisburg. Space is limited. Click
here to learn more about workshop and to register.
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