Daily postings from the Keystone State
Education Coalition now reach more than 3250 Pennsylvania education
policymakers – school directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and
congressional staffers, Governor's staff, current/former PA Secretaries of
Education, PTO/PTA officers, parent advocates, teacher leaders, education
professors, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 regulatory agencies,
professional associations and education advocacy organizations via emails,
website, Facebook and Twitter
These daily emails are archived and
searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org
Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg
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Keystone State Education Coalition
Pennsylvania Education Policy Roundup
for April 4, 2014:
Thousands of parents pull kids from New York
"Advocacy groups estimate that more than 28,000 of the
state's 1.2 million third- through eighth-graders are skipping this week's
three-day English language arts assessments. That's more than double last
year's number."
Thousands of parents pull kids from New York tests
San
Francisco Chronicle By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press Updated 4:16 pm,
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Entire Faculty Of NYC School
The Huffington Post | by Rebecca Klein Posted: 04/03/2014
6:49 pm
The entire faculty at
a New York City
public school is taking a stand against standardized testing.
The Hechinger Report,
a nonprofit education news outlet, on Wednesday published an op-ed written by
the entire faculty at P.S. 167 in Queens , decrying standardized testing's impact on their school. The
teachers wrote that the tests have made students incredibly stressed and
have detracted from students’ educational experiences:
IMHO, we already know that poor performance on SAT's, PSSA's
and Keystone Exams correlates very strongly with poverty level. Why not spend the millions and millions of
dollars we give to Data Recognition Corporation for testing, and the countless
hours of classroom time devoted to test-prep, pre-testing, testing, security,
and re-testing, on actual interventions for high-poverty school populations
(and leave our well-funded, high-performing districts alone)?
“We have graduated far too many kids from Pennsylvania
who are not ready for the next part of their life,” says Joan Benso, CEO of the
Pennsylvania
Rebellion against
standardized testing spreads to Philly
Citypaper By Daniel Denvir Published:
04/03/2014
The No.
2 pencils have been sharpened, but teaching has stopped: It is
standardized-testing time again in Philadelphia
public schools. But, this year, some local parents are rebelling against the
Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) exams and opting their kids out
of the tests.
“There’s
just no way that I can allow the School District to not educate my child
effectively and then tie this albatross around her neck,” LaTonia Lee, the
mother of a seventh-grade special-education student at Feltonville School of
Arts and Sciences, says of the standardized test. Lee was distressed to learn
that no accommodations would be made for her daughter’s language-based
disability. Lee and other parents echo
widespread complaints by teachers that the high-stakes tests distort the
curriculum and stress out students — at a time when schools have suffered mass
layoffs.
Charter schools urge Phila.
City Council to extend 1 percent sales tax
MARTHA WOODALL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER POSTED: Thursday,
April 3, 2014, 3:20 PM
Leaders from the city's
charter school community on Thursday rallied outside City Hall to urge City
Council to extend the extra 1 percent sales tax and use all the proceeds for
schools.
"I want City
Council to think about this 1 percent set aside as an investment to keep
families in Philadelphia," said Jurate Krokys, chief executive of American
Paradigm Schools, a charter management company that runs three city
charters. "Last week, principals
from the district schools were here to point out the impact the budget cuts
have had on their schools," said David Hardy, CEO of Boys' Latin of
Philadelphia in West Philadelphia. "This week we come to stress that all
public schools need additional funding."
A dozen charter CEOs and representatives from charter groups and
education advocates said the sales tax extension was the most viable option for
a new, stable funding stream for schools. They also support a new state funding
formula.
Roebuck $50M tax credit bill
focuses on Pa.'s 406 lowest-achieving schools
Rep.
Roebuck's website PHILADELPHIA, April 3 –
State
Rep. James Roebuck, D-Phila., Democratic chairman of the House Education
Committee, today announced bipartisan legislation that would partner business
with 406 low-achieving public schools statewide to help improve those schools’
academic performance and meet state academic standards. The bill, which will be
H.B. 2147, already has 19 co-sponsors. Roebuck's
bill would establish a new Educational Improvement Opportunity Tax Credit
program, which would authorize $50 million in tax credits for businesses. The
credits would be available for contributions to an education improvement
organization that provides grants to public school districts with low-achieving
schools to improve their academic performance in meeting state academic
standards. A low-achieving school is a public school that is ranked in the
lowest 15 percent based on combined mathematics and reading scores from the
annual state assessments.
The District's court petition
and the uncertain future of collective bargaining
by Dale
Mezzacappa on Apr 02 2014
Posted in Latest news
In its petition
filed last week with the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the Philadelphia School District is asserting its
right to make changes that could have the effect of casting aside nearly
50 years of collective bargaining history, during which its contract with the
Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has grown to govern not just salaries and
benefits but minute details of daily life in schools. To the PFT, the contract codifies protections
for its members and guarantees them everything from functional water fountains
to the right of senior teachers to claim positions in preferred
schools. The union has long argued that its working conditions are student
learning conditions and that some provisions, like limiting class size and
specifying when schools must have counselors and librarians, have acted as a
bulwark against the steady erosion of services while also preserving jobs. But 13 years after the state took over the
District – and after negotiating two contracts with the PFT – the School Reform
Commission is now trying to invoke special powers it received through the law that declared the District “fiscally distressed” and
changed its governance. That law, Act 46, “remade the collective bargaining
landscape” by stripping the union of its right to strike and “cut back sharply
on the scope of the School District ’s duty to
bargain,” according to the petition.
"PCCY is one of nine organizations behind the Pre-K for
PA campaign, which advocates for investing in high quality pre-kindergarten
education for every three-year-old and four-year-old in the state. “For us it’s a key pathway out of poverty.
It’s a key pathway to increasing high school graduation. It’s a key pathway to
ensuring that children are more likely to have decent jobs, stay out of jail,
have productive lives,” Cooper said. “So given that we have limited resources
and the research says that the cheapest place to invest is early childhood, it
makes a lot of sense to do so.”
On the outside looking in: Donna Cooper
Axis
Philly by Julia Bergman, Apr. 1, 2014
It’s
hard to imagine conversations about education in Pennsylvania without Donna
Cooper at the table. Cooper was the
architect of the run-up in state spending on public education under Gov. Ed
Rendell, serving inside government as his secretary of policy and planning for
eight years.
Now,
she is on the outside looking in. As executive director of Public Citizens for
Children and Youth (PCCY), the Philadelphia-based advocacy group, she is on a
mission to increase funding for public education, especially at the Pre-K
level. Going forward, she also is likely
to be at the center of the debate on finding a fair way for Pennsylvania to
dole out the $10 billion a year it distributes to local school districts in
various subsidies.
NPE is going old-school -
April mail-in campaign; write your letter to Congress now
On March 2, 2014, The
Network for Public Education issued a call for congressional hearings into the
overuse and abuse of tests in our schools.
Together, we have managed to catch the attention of Congress,
we created a Twitter Storm that sent out over 20K tweets and reached 400K
people via social media while trending #1, and the offices of Congress members
were flooded with phone calls from concerned constituents. We continue to bring
attention to the plague of over-testing and the media is beginning to take
notice!
For the next part of our campaign, we’re going old school.
During the month of April, we are asking our Friends & Allies to print out
and mail a copy of this
letter to the offices of our friends at Campaign for America ’s Future in Washington D.C.
Education Debate - Pittsburgh, April 8
by Yinzercation
March 20, 2014
Please mark your calendars now
and plan to be a part of this event:
Democratic candidates for
Governor of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, April 8th atPittsburgh 6-12 515 N. Highland Ave. , Pittsburgh
PA 15206
Tuesday, April 8th at
PSBA
nominations for offices now open!
Deadline April 30th
PSBA Leadership Development Committee seeks strong leaders for the association
Members interested in becoming the next leaders of PSBA are encouraged to complete an Application for Nomination no later than April 30. As a member-driven association, the Leadership Development Committee (LDC) is seeking nominees with strong skills in leadership and communication, and who have vision for PSBA. Complete details on the nomination process, links to the Application for Nomination form, and scheduled dates for nominee interviews can be found online by clicking here.
PSBA Leadership Development Committee seeks strong leaders for the association
Members interested in becoming the next leaders of PSBA are encouraged to complete an Application for Nomination no later than April 30. As a member-driven association, the Leadership Development Committee (LDC) is seeking nominees with strong skills in leadership and communication, and who have vision for PSBA. Complete details on the nomination process, links to the Application for Nomination form, and scheduled dates for nominee interviews can be found online by clicking here.
How the Business Community Can Lead on
Early Education
Economy
League of Greater Philadelphia
Join
business and community leaders to learn about how you can help make sure every
child arrives in kindergarten ready to succeed. On April 29th, the Economy
League of Greater Philadelphia and the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and
Southern New Jersey will host a forum featuring business leaders from around
the country talking about why they’re focused on early childhood education and
how they have moved the needle on improving quality and access in their states.
Featured
Speakers
- Jack Brennan, Chairman Emeritus of The Vanguard
Group
- Phil Peterson, Partner, Aon Hewitt and
Co-Chair of America’s Edge/Ready Nation
- And more to be announced!
- Date & Time Tuesday, April
29, 2014 | 5-7 PM
Registration begins at 5 PM;
program from 5:30 to 7:00 PM
- Location Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
10 North Independence Mall West Philadelphia,
PA 19106
Registration:
http://worldclassgreaterphila.org/worldclasscouncilforum
PILCOP Special Education Seminars 2014
Schedule
Public
Interest Law Center of Philadelphia
Tuesday, April 29th,
12-4 p.m.
Wednesday, May 14th,
1-5 p.m. and 6-8 p.m.
2014 PA Gubernatorial Candidate Plans for Education
and Arts/Culture in PA
Education Policy and Leadership Center
Below is an alphabetical list of the 2014
Gubernatorial Candidates and links to information about their plans, if
elected, for education and arts/culture in Pennsylvania. This list will be updated, as more
information becomes available.
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