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Keystone State Education Coalition
PA Ed Policy Roundup December 7, 2015:
House Republicans won't back #PAbudget deal
Campaign for Fair Education Funding: PA Lawmakers need to deliver a
#PABudget that meets the needs of every child. Ask them to at:
Today might be a good day to reach out to your House members. Phone numbers are here:
Post Gazette Opinion
By Mark Duffy, Della Jenkins & Adam Schott December 6, 2015 12:00 AM
Mark Duffy, Della
Jenkins and Adam Schott are researchers at Research for Action, an independent,
Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization that focuses on education research
and evaluation.
In a rare example of
bipartisan agreement, the U.S. House of Representatives has just advanced a
comprehensive update of No Child Left Behind — one that could greatly reduce
the pressure states and districts feel to rate and intervene in public schools
on the basis of standardized test scores.
This action follows a steady drumbeat of public concern with a key facet
of the law — annual standardized testing in core academic subjects. A recent
Gallup Poll, for instance, found that nearly two-thirds of Americans think
there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in education. The same poll
asked respondents to choose which of five possible measures are most important
in gauging school effectiveness; standardized testing came in last. This test fatigue
can also be seen in rising numbers of students opting out of standardized
tests. In 2015, more than 200,000 third- through eighth-grade New York State Colorado Springs
area have also seen increased opt-out rates; in one school, 90 percent of eligible
students opted out of the second round of testing by the Partnership for
Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Here in Pennsylvania , the numbers are far lower, but
with opt-outs increasing from just over 1,000 in 2014 to about 3,200 in 2015,
the trend is clear.
"As you would expect in
any compromise, it is by no means perfect. But it does empower parents and puts
more control of our kids' education back into the hands of our states and
school districts. It has earned the support of, among many others, the National
Parent-Teacher Association, the National Education Association, and the National School
With education reform, Congress shows it can act
With education reform, Congress shows it can act
Philly.com Opinion by Congressman Pat Meehan Updated on DECEMBER 6, 2015 3:01 AM EST
Pat Meehan is a Republican
representing Pennsylvania's Seventh Congressional District
Don't look now, but
there's good news out of Washington .
And it's good news for students, teachers, parents, and taxpayers. First, some history. In 1965, Congress
enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, groundbreaking legislation
that authorized the federal government to support our kids and teachers in the
classroom. Congress made periodic changes to the law every few years, updating
it to meet the changing needs of our states and school districts. The bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act,
signed into law in 2002, introduced more accountability into our education
system by mandating regular testing to measure student achievement. Though
well-intentioned, No Child Left Behind has proven unworkable and has had
unintended consequences that have set back student learning. But after No Child Left Behind, Washington gridlock
brought the debate over federal support for K-12 education to a halt. It has
been almost 15 years since the last time we've made changes to the law, and the
2002 measure lapsed seven years ago.
Did you catch our weekend
postings?
PA Ed Policy Roundup Dec 6: #PABudget: Just when you
thought it was safe to go back in the water….
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2015/12/pa-ed-policy-roundup-dec-6-pabudget.html
Senate loads budget and pension
bills that face uncertain future
The PLS Reporter Author: Jason Gottesman/Sunday, December
6, 2015
Moving right along
with the once-touted five-party budget framework agreement, the Senate
Appropriations Committee sent a General Appropriations bill and pension reform
proposal to the full Senate floor in accordance with the agreement. However, their fate in the House remains
anything but certain. The budget bill
passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee included a total spend number of
$30.788 billion budget. That number is
over $500 million above an amount the House Republican caucus said it would be
willing to support after contentious caucus meetings Friday and Saturday. The lone negative vote on the budget bill,
Sen. Scott Wagner (R-York) said he was uncomfortable with some of the increases
in the different lines. “The increase in
school funding is an issue with me because we aren’t doing anything with
prevailing wage increases, we aren’t doing anything to cap salary increases,
we’re not doing anything for healthcare costs,” he said. “We need to do
something on the costs side.”
"I hope they pass
it," said Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County
Senate to proceed with
voting on $30.8 billion budget despite House GOP's opposition
Penn Live By Jan Murphy |
jmurphy@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
December 06, 2015 at 11:40 PM, updated December 06, 2015 at 11:41 PM
The latest
development in Pennsylvania 's
seemingly never-ending 2015-16
state budgetsaga took what the Senate considers a step forward by
positioning a $30.8 billion spending plan for a vote as early as Monday. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Sunday
voted 25-1 to approve the 2015-16 spending bill that holds to the budget framework agreed to by leaders of the
GOP-controlled House and Senate and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf last month. That plan, however, faces an uncertain future in the House where many members in
that chamber's fractured GOP caucus declared on Saturday they could not support
the necessary tax increases that the plan requires.
State House GOP adopts own fiscal plan, jeopardizing
budget deal
By Karen Langley and
Kate Giammarise / Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette December 6, 2015 10:54 PM
Pennsylvania budget endgame unclear as House
Republicans balk, cancel Sunday session
Morning Call by Mark Scolforo Of The Associated Press December 6, 2015
Who's to blame for Pennsylvania
Meeting of House leaders
leads to no discernible budget game plan
The PLS Reporter Author: Jason Gottesman/Sunday, December
6, 2015
A closed-door
meeting between top House Republican and Democratic lawmakers Sunday evening
left no discernible game plan as to how the two sides will move along with
passing a budget in the coming days and weeks.
The meeting came after a Saturday announcement by House Republicans that
they would run a pared-down budget bill with $600 million less revenue than
agreed to as part of a previously negotiated budget framework. Sunday meetings in the House Appropriations
Committee and the House Rules Committee were cancelled, as sources close to the
issue told The PLS Reporter that Republican legislators needed
more time to consider that bare-bones $30.2 billion budget and “cool off” after
a two days of contentious caucus meetings.
The discussion that took the place of those two committee voting
meetings did not seem to leave leaders on either side of the aisle feeling like
there was much resolution to many of the outstanding questions in terms of how
to move forward.
"The tentative budget
agreement calls for spending an additional $350 million on public schools, $60
million on early childhood education, and $50 million on special education. The
deal also would make changes to the state's pension and liquor systems. Republicans who control the House said
Saturday they could not muster enough support for the deal - this after leaders
had agreed to it in the budget negotiating room. A House committee had scheduled a vote on a
scaled-down - and competing - spending plan Sunday, but abruptly canceled the
vote.
House GOP spokesman Steve
Miskin said House members still were working on the details in the plan. He
said he expects a vote on it as early as Monday."
by Angela Couloumbis, Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau. Updated on DECEMBER 7, 2015 1:08
AM EST
Pension reform proposal
would make new plan optional for sitting lawmakers
Penn Live By Jan Murphy |
jmurphy@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
December 07, 2015 at 1:15 AM, updated December 07, 2015 at 1:16 AM
A proposed reform to
the state's two major public pension systems that could receive a vote in the
state Senate as early as Monday would give sitting lawmakers the choice of staying in the current
system upon standing for re-election.
But any newly elected lawmaker would be forced into a new system that
would combine a lower guaranteed-benefit plan with a 401(k)-style plan just
like any other state government employee hired after Jan. 1, 2018, or school
employee hired after July 1, 2017. That
single point in the 195-page bill became the sole focus of debate in Sunday's
Senate Appropriations Committee on a pension reform plan, which won the
committee's approval by a 21-5 vote. It now is positioned to receive
consideration by the full Senate as early as Monday.
House Republicans won't back budget deal
Morning Call by Marc Levy Of
The Associated Press December 6, 2015 10:17 am
Pennsylvania House Republicans revolted Saturday against the
latest plan between Gov. Tom Wolf and top lawmakers to break a five-month
budget stalemate, leaving two competing plans and any resolution in doubt. House Republicans emerged from a lengthy
closed-door meeting in the Capitol to say that the majority caucus would not
support a multi-faceted budget plan their leadership had helped negotiate in
the prior weeks. Instead, House
Republicans said, consensus had emerged around a smaller spending plan and a
smaller tax increase. "It's much
closer to what the caucus has been looking for in a budget," said
Rep. Seth Grove, R-York. Rep. Kate Harper, R-Montgomery, said she expected a Monday
floor vote on the plan. House Republican leaders remained in the ongoing
meeting during an unusual weekend session for lawmakers. Both Wolf and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, said Saturday they remained
committed to a deal that revolved around a $30.7 billion spending plan with a
$350 million boost for public schools, each a 6 percent increase.
Political Winners &
Losers: The budget just imploded - now what?
Penn Live By John L. Micek |
jmicek@pennlive.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on
December 06, 2015 at 9:00 AM, updated December 06, 2015 at 10:54 AM
Good Sunday Morning, Everyone.
Well it looks like the budget framework we've all been hearing so much about is probably going to be blown to flinders when the House and Senate convene today. So we're going to have a tough time finding any winners this Sunday morning. But let's get to it, shall we?
Well it looks like the budget framework we've all been hearing so much about is probably going to be blown to flinders when the House and Senate convene today. So we're going to have a tough time finding any winners this Sunday morning. But let's get to it, shall we?
The Budget, The Budget, The Budget: House Republicans dynamited the budget framework on Saturday after
an hours-long caucus revealed that GOP bosses didn't have the votes for the $2
billion in taxes needed to pay for the spending plan. As PennLive's Charlie
Thompson reports, the House GOP says it'll start work Sunday on a smaller $30.3
billion plan, that cuts a projected increase in funding for public schools from
$350 million to $150 million, and contains no changes to the state sales or
income taxes. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, say they'll start voting Sunday
evening on the bills associated with the framework, setting up a bizarre
scenario that will see the two chambers proceeding along two separate, but
parallel tracks, to try to resolve the six-month-old impasse.
Governor Wolf Statement on Budget and Education
Funding
Governor Wolf website December 05, 2015
“The most important
thing we can do to lay a foundation for long-term economic growth in Pennsylvania and prepare
our children to compete in a 21st century economy is to make historic
investments in education to reverse the devastating cuts from five years ago.
“Nearly one month
ago, Republican leaders agreed to a budget with me that includes the largest
increase in education funding – at all levels – in the history of Pennsylvania . It is long
past time for the legislature to move ahead with this agreement and end this
impasse.
“This agreement,
that Republican leaders stood outside my office twice to announce, includes an
additional $60 million for early childhood education, which will create 14,000
new slots for children, it invests $400 million new dollars into K through 12
education, a hugely important first step in restoring the cuts made to school
funding, and the agreement increases higher education funding by 5 percent.
“I urge the
legislature to come together and pass the budget with this historic education
funding and begin to move the commonwealth forward.”
WHYY Newsworks COMMENTARY BY MARC STIER DECEMBER 7, 2015 ESSAYWORKS
Marc Stier is the director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center
It
appears that legislators have decided to raise new — and necessary — revenue by
expanding the sales tax base to include more goods and services
instead of increasing the sales tax rate. This would be a good way to raise
revenue if it is done in ways that make the tax more equitable. Still
a broader sales tax will fall more heavily on low-income families. Legislators
can limit the burden on those least able to bear it by coupling the sales tax
expansion with a new, refundable sales tax credit.
The inequity of
the sales tax
The original budget
framework increased the state's sales tax rate from 7 percent to 8.25 percent
(and from 8 percent to 9.25 percent in Philadelphia ).
This proposal was opposed by many legislators. Some opposed any tax increase.
Others worried that businesses near our borders with other states would lose
sales. A third group was rightly
concerned that the sales tax places too much of a burden on those with low
incomes. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the
lowest-income 20 percent of Pennsylvania
families pay an average of 5.8 percent of their income in sales tax. The top 20
percent, by contrast, pay less than 2.3 percent of their income in sales tax.
And families in the top 1 percent pay only 0.6 percent of their incomes in
sales tax. A recent Pennsylvania Budget and
Policy Center (PBPC) report demonstrated that an increase in the
personal income tax raises revenue in a far more equitable way than an increase
in the sales tax.
Pottsgrove school taxes
will not rise above 3.1%
By Evan Brandt,
The Mercury POSTED: 12/02/15,
2:01 PM EST | UPDATED: 2 HRS AGO
The disturbing provisions about teacher preparation in
No Child Left Behind rewrite
There
has been loud applause in the education world for the new Every Student
Succeeds Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind that has passed the House
and is expected to become federal law soon. It has been hailed as a fix-it to
the broken NCLB law, and it does indeed moderate some of NCLB’s biggest
problems. But, perhaps because the legislation was only made public a few days
before the House voted, there has been little time to look at the details in
the bill. In this post, Kenneth
Zeichner, a professor of teacher education at the University
of Washington at Seattle , does just that in regard to how the
bill approaches teacher preparation programs — and he reveals some deep
concerns. For example:
* Provisions in the
legislation for the establishment of teacher preparation academies are written
to primarily support non-traditional, non-university programs such as those
funded by venture philanthropists.
* The legislation
“oversteps the authority of the federal government” in several ways, including
by declaring that
the completion of a
program in an academy run by an organization other than a university results in
a certificate of completion that may be recognized by states as “at
least the equivalent of a master’s degree in education for the purpose of
hiring, retention, compensation, and promotion in the state.” The federal
government absolutely has no business in suggesting what should and what should
not count as the equivalent of a master’s degree in individual states.
* The legislation
seeks to mandate “definitions of the content of teacher education programs and
methods of program approval that are state responsibilities.” As a result, it
lowers “standards for teacher education programs that prepare teachers for
high-poverty schools … by exempting teacher preparation academies from what are
referred to as ‘unnecessary restrictions on the methods of the academy.’ ”
Here’s the piece by
Zeichner, who is a member of the National Academy of Education and professor
emeritus in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – S.1177
Transition Timetable and Frequently Asked Questions: A Local School Board
Primer
NSBA Prepared
December 1, 2015
Check out The Network for
Public Education's new Website
The Network for
Public Education was
founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. We are an advocacy group
whose mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public
schools for both current and future generations of students. The goal of NPE is to connect all those who
are passionate about our schools – students, parents, teachers and citizens. We
share information and research on vital issues that concern the future of
public education at a time when they are under attack.
Education Bloggers Daily
Highlights 12-7-15
PSBA New School Director
Training
School boards who will welcome new directors after the election should
plan to attend PSBA training to help everyone feel more confident right from
the start. This one-day event is targeted to help members learn the basics of
their new roles and responsibilities. Meet the friendly, knowledgeable PSBA
team and bring everyone on your “team of 10” to get on the same page fast.
- $150 per
registrant (No charge if your district has a LEARN Pass. Note: All-Access
members also have LEARN Pass.)
- One-hour lunch
on your own — bring your lunch, go to lunch, or we’ll bring a box lunch to
you; coffee/tea provided all day
- Course
materials available online or we’ll bring a printed copy to you for an
additional $25
- Registrants
receive one month of 100-level online courses for each registrant, after
the live class
Nine locations
for your convenience:
- Philadelphia
area — Nov. 21 William Tennent HS, Warminster (note: location changed from
IU23 Norristown)
- Pittsburgh
area — Dec. 5 Allegheny IU3, Homestead
- South Central
PA and Erie areas (joint program)— Dec. 12 Northwest Tri-County IU5,
Edinboro and PSBA, Mechanicsburg
- Butler area —
Jan. 9 Midwestern IU 4, Grove City (note: location changed from Penn State
New Kensington)
- Allentown area
— Jan. 16 Lehigh Career & Technical Institute, Schnecksville
- Central PA —
Jan. 30 Nittany Lion Inn, State College
- Scranton area
— Feb. 6 Abington Heights SD, Clarks Summit
- North Central
area —Feb. 13 Mansfield University, Mansfield
Register here: https://www.psba.org/2015/09/new-school-director-training/
NSBA Advocacy
Institute 2016; January 24 - 26 in Washington ,
D.C.
Housing and meeting registration is open for Advocacy Institute 2016. The theme, “Election Year Politics & Public Schools,” celebrates the exciting year ahead for school board advocacy. Strong legislative programming will be paramount at this year’s conference in January. Visit www.nsba.org/advocacyinstitute for more information.
Housing and meeting registration is open for Advocacy Institute 2016. The theme, “Election Year Politics & Public Schools,” celebrates the exciting year ahead for school board advocacy. Strong legislative programming will be paramount at this year’s conference in January. Visit www.nsba.org/advocacyinstitute for more information.
PASBO 61st Annual
Conference and Exhibits March 8 - 11, 2016
Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania
Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania
The Network for Public Education 3rd
Annual National Conference April 16-17, 2016 Raleigh , North Carolina
The
Network for Public Education is thrilled to announce the location for our 3rd
Annual National Conference. On April 16 and 17, 2016 public education advocates
from across the country will gather in Raleigh, North Carolina. We chose Raleigh to highlight the tremendous
activist movement that is flourishing in North Carolina. No one exemplifies
that movement better than the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, who will be the
conference keynote speaker. Rev. Barber is the current president of
the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the National NAACP chair of
the Legislative Political Action Committee, and the founder of Moral Mondays.
Interested in letting our
elected leadership know your thoughts on education funding, a severance tax,
property taxes and the budget?
Governor Tom Wolf,
(717) 787-2500
Speaker of the
House Rep. Mike Turzai, (717) 772-9943
House Majority Leader Rep. Dave Reed, (717) 705-7173
Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Joe Scarnati, (717) 787-7084
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jake Corman, (717) 787-1377
House Majority Leader Rep. Dave Reed, (717) 705-7173
Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Joe Scarnati, (717) 787-7084
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jake Corman, (717) 787-1377
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