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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup for
January 27, 2015:
One of the
last acts of the Corbett Administration was to renew three cyber charters
Upcoming Basic Education Funding Commission hearings
scheduled in Mercer County, Montgomery County and Dauphin County
PA
Basic Education Funding Commission website
Thursday, January 29, 2015, 10 am Greenville Junior/Senior High School 9
Donation Road, Greenville , PA 16125
Thursday, February 5, 2015, 10 amMontgomery County ,
location TBA
Thursday, February 26, 2015, 11 amDauphin County
Thursday, February 5, 2015, 10 am
Thursday, February 26, 2015, 11 am
House Majority Leader Dave
Reed talks beer, bipartisanship and governor's growing pains at Pa.
Penn Live By Jan Murphy |
jmurphy@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
January 26, 2015 at 4:52 PM, updated January 26, 2015 at 4:53 PM
Roughly 140 people piled into the room inside the Hilton
Harrisburg Hilton to hear House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, speak to
the Pennsylvania Press Club on Monday.
Tables and chairs were hauled in at the last minute to
accommodate the larger than expected crowd. Reed quipped that it may not have
been a strong desire to hear his first-ever speech to the press club that drew
them there for the luncheon.
Blogger's note: None of Pennsylvania's 500
school districts authorized cyber charters but every district is required to
send tax dollars to them, even if the district has it's own cyber or blended
program, and regardless of the cyber's academic performance or lack thereof…
One of the
last acts of the Corbett Administration was to renew three cyber charters
None of these cyber charters achieved a passing score
of 70 on Pennsylvania
No cyber charter achieved a score of 70 in either
year. Additionally, most cybers never made AYP under No Child Left Behind
during the period 2005 thru 2012.
Here are the 2013 and 2014 SPP scores for Pennsylvania
School
2013 2014
21st Century Cyber CS
66.5 66.0
Achievement House
CS
39.7 37.5
Agora Cyber CS
48.3 42.4
ASPIRA Bilingual CS
29.0
39.0
Commonwealth Connections Academy CS
54.6 52.2
Esperanza Cyber CS
32.7
47.7
Solomon Charter School
Inc.
36.9
Susq-Cyber
CS
46.4 42.4
Most cybers
never made Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind…..
PA Cyber Charter PSSA AYP 2005
- 2012 from PDE
Of 12 PA cyber charters -only 1 made AYP for 2012 only 2 made
AYP for 2011 while 8 were in corrective action status.
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/11/pa-cyber-charter-pssa-ayp-2007-2011.html
"Dumaresq made the cyber decisions on
Jan. 15, five days before Gov. Tom Wolf's inauguration. Unlike past years, her rulings were not
announced publicly. Instead, they were posted late last week on the
department's website."…. "A spokeswoman for the Education Department
said that a decision would be made by Thursday on the third applicant: Insight
PA Cyber Charter School Newtown Square
Pa.
MARTHA WOODALL, INQUIRER
STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, January 27, 2015, 1:08 AM POSTED: Monday,
January 26, 2015, 4:39 PM
The Pennsylvania Department of Education has turned down two of
the three applications for new cyber charter schools and will decide the fate
of the third later this week, a department spokeswoman said Monday. And despite the lackluster academic
performance of the state's existing 14 cybers, the department has approved
three that were up for renewal, but directed them to make improvements.
"This legislation will eliminate the
development and implementation of the seven pending Keystone Exams. In
addition, this legislation will allow individual school districts to determine
whether Keystone Exams will be used as a graduation requirement if they believe
it is in the best interests of their students and education plan; adhering to Pennsylvania
House
Co-Sponsorship Memoranda From: Representative Mike Tobash
January 16,
2015 10:26 AM Subject: Keystone Exams Introduced
as HB168
Please find attached legislation
that I plan to introduce in the near future regarding the Keystone Exams. The Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)
requires state testing to be done in order to evaluate the performance of
schools and their students. Pennsylvania
After hearing feedback from school
administrators, parents, teachers, students, businesses and higher education
professionals, I believe legislation is needed to address their concerns.
Pa. house speaker blasts City
Council on PGW, warns of repercussions to Philly schools
WHYY Newsworks BY KEVIN
MCCORRY JANUARY 26, 2015
One of Pennsylvania 's
most powerful state lawmakers says the actions of Philadelphia City Council may
put additional funding in jeopardy for the cash-strapped city school district.
Speaker of the House Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) criticized City
Council's decision to not hold a hearing on Mayor Michael Nutter's plan to sell
the city-owned Philadelphia Gas Works.
Philly school district
investigating Philly school with 20% opt-out rate
WHYY Newsworks BY LAURA
BENSHOFF JANUARY 26, 2015
Parents of about 100 students at North
Philadelphia 's Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences have signed
letters withdrawing their children from standardized tests. Now, the Philadelphia School
District
Who's opting-out
The parents at Feltonville are a part of a growing regional and
national "opt-out" movement, with footholds in suburban New Jersey as well as big city districts like Chicago and Los
Angeles .
Last year, members of Philadelphia City Council held a hearing on
standardized testing and councilmembers Mark Squilla, Jannie Blackwell and
Maria Quinones-Sanchez all signed a letter in support of Feltonville's
opting-out parents last week. These and
other supporters of the opt-out movement highlight the fact that all students –
regardless of whether they are English language learners (ELL) or have special
education needs – take the same tests. That means that students known to
perform at below grade level are still evaluated in their grade.
"After teachers at one Philadelphia
Time out for teachers who
counseled to opt out of tests?
KRISTEN A. GRAHAM, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER LAST UPDATED: Tuesday, January 27,
2015, 1:08 AM POSTED: Monday, January 26, 2015, 3:34 PM
After teachers at one Philadelphia
public school let parents know they had a legal right to opt their children out
of standardized exams, a remarkable thing happened: One in five wrote letters telling the
principal their child would not take the tests this year. Now, several teachers at the Feltonville
School of Arts and Sciences face possible disciplinary action. Earlier this school year, the teachers held
informational pickets before the school day and meetings at a local public
library, handing out fliers and discussing with parents their right to have
their children skip the state exams, the single biggest metric for judging
schools.
Some Feltonville
middle-schoolers 'opt out' of standardized testing
ADMINISTRATORS at the Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences
are investigating six teachers who have informed parents about the option to
"opt out" of standardized testing.
Since the teachers' efforts began last fall, 17 percent of the
school's parents have opted their children out of testing, said Kelley
Collings, one of the six teachers who will meet Thursday with principal Michael
Reid.
DN Editorial: CHOKING ON
CHARTERS: More want in, but their numbers - and pols' ignorance - doom
the District
Philly DaIly News Editorial POSTED: Tuesday, January 27,
2015, 3:01 AM
WHO GETS to make key decisions regarding the future of public
education? Those who send their kids to schools? The taxpayers who pay for it?
Lawmakers who provide school funding? Experts who study academic data and
performance? The good news is that
everyone has a stake in education. The bad news is that the most critical
decisions related to how schools function are in the hands of a few: lawmakers
who decide on how much money the schools get. In this state, those decisions
are too often made in the absence of thoughtful analysis or a basic grasp of
the facts.
Trib Live Opinion By Esther L. Bush & Jonathan Cetel Monday,
Jan. 26, 2015, 9:00 p.m.
Esther L. Bush is
president of the Urban League of Pittsburgh and
chairs the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh
Charter School
Although it remains plagued by a racial divide that leads to disparate outcomes for its young people,Pittsburgh
is a resilient city filled with little gems that undermine the myth that race
and poverty are overwhelming barriers to success. One such gem is the Urban League of Greater
Pittsburgh Charter School, where over 80 percent of the school is low income
and 100 percent of the student body is black. Recent results show that the
school had a negative achievement gap, which means black students performed
better, on average, than their white counterparts in district schools.
Although it remains plagued by a racial divide that leads to disparate outcomes for its young people,
Read more: http://triblive.com/opinion/featuredcommentary/7627311-74/schools-pittsburgh-charter#ixzz3Q1RHtjbw
Schools need your help, Gov.
Wolf (letter)
Governor Wolf, can you save our city schools like you saved
your company? Your official website, tom.wolfforpa.com, boasts, “Both Sarah and
Katie attended York
County Pennsylvania .
You stated in a campaign ad, “The money we need to fund our schools lies right
under your feet. … I'll make the gas companies pay up to help fund our schools
for a change.” What lessons did you learn from selling then saving Wolf
Cabinets from the “brink of bankruptcy?” Can you do the same for York schools?
"Until the state can actually come up
with an idea on how much it costs to educate a child in Pennsylvania and fund
districts equally and come up with a funding stream for education, our problems
will never be solved," Bender said.
Your4state.com by Brittany Marshall 01/22/2015
05:54 PM
SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. - A $1
million budget deficit is looming over the Shippensburg Area
School District
"Since 2009, we have had to make the decision to cut 100.4 full time equivalence, which is the equivalent of 104 people to support the education of this district," said superintendent Beth Bender. Next school year, the cuts will run even deeper. "We have not cut any programs, but now the programs are moving up to the top of allowable cuts, and the cuts today and moving forward are going to be harder than what we have had in the past," said board president Herb Cassidy.
"Since 2009, we have had to make the decision to cut 100.4 full time equivalence, which is the equivalent of 104 people to support the education of this district," said superintendent Beth Bender. Next school year, the cuts will run even deeper. "We have not cut any programs, but now the programs are moving up to the top of allowable cuts, and the cuts today and moving forward are going to be harder than what we have had in the past," said board president Herb Cassidy.
What the New Senate Education
Chair Thinks About No Child Left Behind
Time Magazine by Haley Sweetland Edwards
Jan. 25, 2015
Sen. Lamar Alexander, the new chairman of the Senate committee
on education, walked into Congress this month with guns a-blazin’.
Twelve years after the passage of George W. Bush’s signature
education bill, No Child Left Behind, and eight years after that troubled law
was supposed to be revised and updated, the Tennessee Republican says now is
the time for its long-neglected makeover.
He plans to take a revised version of the law to the Senate
floor by the end of February, with hopes of pushing it through Congress “in the
first half of this year.”
What exactly that makeover will look like is now the subject of
hot debate on Capitol Hill.
Throw More Money at Education
Bloomberg View By Noah Smith 101 JAN
23, 2015 9:39 AM EST
It’s become almost conventional
wisdom that throwing more money at public education doesn’t produce
results. But what if conventional wisdom is wrong?
A new paper from
economists C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson and Claudia Persico suggests that
it is. To disentangle correlation from causation, they look at periods from
1955 through 1985 when courts ordered governments to spend more on schools,
from kindergarten through 12th grade. They then track how students in those
areas did, up through 2011. The result is a very detailed long-term picture of
the effect of spending more money on education.
The economists find that spending works. Specifically, they
find that a 10 percent increase in spending, on average, leads children to
complete 0.27 more years of school, to make wages that are 7.25 percent higher
and to have a substantially reduced chance of falling into poverty. These are
long-term, durable results. Conclusion: throwing money at the problem works.
TFA-Like Corps Sends College
Advisers to High Schools
Education Week By Caralee
J. Adams Published Online: January 13, 2015
The message is simple, yet powerful: "If I can do it, you
can do it, too."
That's what graduates fresh out of college working in the College Advising Corps often tell
high school students. Similar to Teach For America, the national program that
recruits newly minted college graduates to teach in classrooms, the corps
advisers commit to working full time for two years. They work alongside high
school counselors with the goal of improving the number of first-generation
college-going, low-income, underrepresented students who apply to, enter, and
complete college. Because most of the
advisers were the first in their families to go to college, or are members of
minority groups (one-third are African-American and another third Latino), they
can relate to the students they serve. "The
advisers feel an absolute obligation. ... Before they advance, they feel they
need to turn back and pull somebody through that door as well," said
Nicole F. Hurd, the founder and chief executive officer of the Chapel Hill , N.C.-based nonprofit organization.
"They have credibility because they are so close in age and circumstance
to the students."
NEPC
Analysis Gives a Failing Grade to School Report Cards
Statewide school
accountability systems that measure school performance on an
A-F scale are invalid, inaccurate, and undemocratic, a new policy brief concludes
A-F scale are invalid, inaccurate, and undemocratic, a new policy brief concludes
National Education Policy Center
BOULDER, CO (January 26, 2015)
Sixteen states purport to
measure how effective schools are by assigning “report cards” that grade
individual public schools on a scale of “A” to “F”.
Such systems deserve a failing
grade, according to a new policy brief published today by the National Education
Policy Center
Diane Ravitch's Blog By dianeravitch January
26, 2015 //
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Philadelphia ,
PA
Parents at Feltonville and across the district stand in support
of teachers
Dissatisfied with how standardized testing is eclipsing their
children’s education, 20% of parents at Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences
— with the support of teachers — have opted their children out of standardized
testing. And that number is growing despite disciplinary actions taken last
week against teachers involved in informing parents of their rights.
Thorough and Efficient: Pennsylvania
Arguing that our state has failed to ensure that essential
resources are available for all of our public school students to meet state
academic standards.
Register
Now! EPLC 2015 Regional Workshops for School Board Candidates and Others
The Education Policy and Leadership Center, with the
Cooperation of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) and
Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO), will
conduct A Series of Regional Full-Day Workshops for 2015
Pennsylvania School Board Candidates. Incumbents,
non-incumbents, campaign supporters and all interested voters are invited to
participate in these workshops.
Pittsburgh Region Saturday, February 21, 2015 – 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 East Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Allegheny Intermediate Unit, 475 East Waterfront Drive, Homestead, PA 15120
Harrisburg Region Saturday, March 7, 2015– 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Pennsylvania School Boards Association Headquarters, 400 Bent Creek Boulevard, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Pennsylvania School Boards Association Headquarters, 400 Bent Creek Boulevard, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Philadelphia Region Saturday, March 14, 2015 – 8:30
a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, 2 W. Lafayette Street, Norristown, PA 19401
Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, 2 W. Lafayette Street, Norristown, PA 19401
INVITATION:
Twitter Chat on Pennsylvania Basic Education Funding Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 8 p.m.
The first monthly Twitter chat of 2015 with Pennsylvania’s
major education leadership organizations is set for Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 8
p.m. The January chat will focus on a fair, predictable public school
funding formula and the ongoing work of the state’s basic education funding
commission. Use hashtag#PAEdFunding to participate and follow the
conversation.
On the last Tuesday of each month at 8 p.m., the following
organizations go to Twitter to discuss timely topics, ask questions and listen
to the public’s responses:
·
The Pennsylvania Association of School
Administrators (PASA);
·
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association
(PSBA);
·
The Pennsylvania Association of School Business
Officials (PASBO);
·
The Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small
Schools (PARSS); and
·
The Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate
Units
PILCOP: Children with
Emotional Problems: Avoiding the Juvenile Justice System, and What Does Real
Help Look Like?
This session will help you navigate special education in order
to assist children at home not receiving services, those in the foster care
system or those in the juvenile court system. CLE and Act 48 credit is
available. This session is co-sponsored
by the University of Pennsylvania School of Policy and Practice, a Pre-approved
Provider of Continuing Education for Pennsylvania
licensed social workers. Click here to purchase tickets
NPE 2015 Annual Conference – Chicago
January 4, 2015 NPE 2015 Annual Conference, NPE National Conference
Early-bird discounted Registration for the Network for Public
Education’s Second Annual Conference is now available at this address:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/network-for-public-education-2015-annual-conference-tickets-15118560020
These low rates will last for the month of January.
The event is being held at the Drake Hotel in downtown
Chicago, and there is a link on the registration page for special hotel
registration rates. Here are some of the event details.
There will be a welcoming social event 7 pm Friday night,
at or near the Drake Hotel — details coming soon. Featured speakers will be:
§
Jitu Brown, National Director – Journey
for Justice, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Network for Public
Education Board of Directors
§
Tanaisa Brown, High School Senior, with
the Newark Student Union
§
Yong Zhao, Author, “Who’s Afraid of
the Big Bad Dragon?“
§
Diane Ravitch in conversation with
§
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, NEA President and
§
Randi Weingarten, AFT President
§
Karen Lewis, President, Chicago Teachers
Union
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