Last night, Governor Dayton signed the policy and funding bills that laid out Minnesota’s next two-year, $46 billion dollar budget, which includes over $18 billion for K-12 education.
However, even though Governor Dayton signed the bills, he used his line-item veto power to eliminate funding for the Legislature, which will likely force another special session. In a letter to the Speaker and Majority leaders, Governor Dayton asserted that he would only allow a special session if they agreed to “re-open and re-negotiate” five provisions, one of which is the overhaul of the teacher licensure system.
Even though a second special session is likely imminent, we have provided in-depth policy summaries for a few of the provisions that we have previously covered, as well as other provisions that have been widely covered during this legislative session.
First Things First, What Isn’t in the K-12 Education Bill?
One noticeable provision not included in the Education Bill is the tax credit scholarships. Opponents of the scholarships claimed that they were “proxy school vouchers” that move state funds toward private education, while proponents asserted that it would give parents more freedom in finding a school that fits the needs of their child.
Innovation Research Zone Pilot Program (Lines 67.6-70.30)
The Innovation Research Zone Pilot Program enables the establishment of innovation zones (IZs) that “allow school districts and charter schools to research and implement innovative education programming models designed to better prepare students for the world of the 21st century.” Read more about the new program in our earlier blog post, and in this summary.
The IZ legislation was championed by Education Evolving, the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, and the Minnesota School Boards Association, and had the support of Schools for Equity in Education and Ed Allies.
Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) State Accountability Plan (Lines 71.1-71.12)
The commissioner must submit the state’s ESSA accountability plan to the legislature’s education policy and finance committees at least 30 days before submitting the plan to the US Department of Education. Additionally, the state plan must be “consistent and aligned, to the extent possible” with the World’s Best Workforce. This language is much more relaxed than earlier versions of the bill that prescribed what should be included in the school quality and student success indicator.
Funding for PreK Programs and the Creation of “School Readiness Plus” Program (Lines 51.28-154.15 & 154.27-155.7)
It’s no secret that Governor Dayton is a champion for voluntary prekindergarten. In his letter to the Speaker, he wrote that he is “pleased” that the bill has additional funding for prekindergarten, but that the bill “failed to meet the known demand for the prekindergarten program established last session” and that since the funding is one-time only it will be a “detriment to establishing ongoing programs to serve our youngest learners.”
The “additional funding” Governor Dayton referenced in his letter was the $50 million that the legislature allocated for mixed delivery, voluntary prekindergarten programs and for the new “School Readiness Plus” program. The purpose of the “School Readiness Plus” program is to “prepare children for success as they enter kindergarten,” by allowing a district, charter school, or a combination of the two to establish a program for students ages four to kindergarten entrance.
For the “School Readiness Plus” program, district and charter schools are able to contract with a charter school, Head Start or child care center, family child care program, or a community-based organization to provide “developmentally appropriate services.”
The $50 million allocation is in addition to the $67 million dedicated to school readiness, $140 million for early learning scholarships, and $50 million for Head Start for the two-year biennium.
Alternative Teacher Preparation Grant Program (Lines 60.26-62.16)
The commissioner, in consultation with the Board of Teaching, must establish and manage a program that will annually award grants to eligible alternative teacher preparation programs. In order for a program to be eligible for the grant, they must be a “school district, charter school, or nonprofit” that has been in operation for three continuous years in Minnesota or any other state, and must be working to fill the state’s teacher shortage areas. The commissioner must give preference to programs that are based in Minnesota.
A couple of the uses that the grant monies can be put towards are recruiting, selecting, and training teachers of color and for establishing professional development programs for teacher who obtained their teacher licenses via alternative teacher preparation programs. The legislature allocated $750,000 for the program for the 2018 fiscal year.
Tiered Teacher Licensure System—At Least for Now (Article 3)
Under the new tiered teacher licensure system the Board of Teaching is abolished and replaced by the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB), which is responsible for issuing teacher licenses to qualified candidates.
The meat of the law lies with the four-tiered teacher licensure system, which follows the recommendations from the 2016 OLA report and the Legislative Study Group on Educator Licensing, who both asserted that a tiered system would provide “transparency, consistency, and flexibility.” Starting with Tier 1, candidates have prescribed pathways and requirements for how they can work up to the paramount license, Tier 4.
Changes to this newly passed system, however, are likely given that Governor Dayton stripped the Legislature of its funding and mandated that they re-open negotiations on the teacher licensure system, and four other provisions, in order for a special session to occur.
Education Evolving will continue to follow and report the development of the teacher licensure system, as well as other relevant education policy topics.
Congress is making momentous decisions that could fundamentally reshape U.S. health care with a serious negative impact on our most vulnerable children. The House of Representatives already voted in favor of $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the program that covers one in three American children.
Local critics have focused on the immense harm that would come from taking $2 billion away from Pennsylvania by 2020 and threaten healthcare that reaches 2.8 million residents.
Pennsylvania schools stand to lose more than $40 billion in Medicaid reimbursements that pay for healthcare for disadvantaged children and special-education services delivered on site. That will mean employing fewer nurses, physical therapists, speech pathologists, and other professionals. Vision, hearing, asthma and mental health screening programs may go away. It will also become more difficult to integrate the necessary support and technologies that empower disabled students to learn alongside their peers.
We know that our most vulnerable families need access to high quality medical care, safe and affordable housing, and jobs with family-sustaining wages so that students are well positioned to take full advantage of learning opportunities available in our public schools. We use the term “collective impact” to describe the team effort needed to support our neighbors in need.
Abandoning a 50-year, bipartisan commitment to children’s health undermines society’s “collective impact” and will have long-term repercussions. Studies demonstrate that children enrolled in Medicaid experience a lifetime of reduced disease and disability compared with their uninsured peers. They also do better academically and go on to secure higher paying jobs and contribute more in taxes.
Slashing Medicaid will have the opposite effects: higher healthcare costs, increasingly strained government budgets, students less able to benefit from educational opportunities and a workforce less prepared to take on the challenges of a technology-driven global economy.
The sad reality is that the most vulnerable students — those in need of medical treatment or physical assistance — would lose the most. But they won’t be alone. Many of the services funded by Medicaid are legally mandated. As federal funding dries up, schools will have to reallocate money from elsewhere.
When federal and state mandates on schools are not funded at the state and federal level, the burden for paying for these mandates is shifted to the local taxpayer. The potential cut in Medicaid reimbursement to schools combined with state-mandated pension payments and unfunded state-mandated charter school tuition payments adds to the financial burdens of school districts, leading to a combination of unpopular cuts in educational programs combined with unpopular property tax increases.
Our great country can do better than this.
Michael Faccinetto is president of the Bethlehem Area School District School Board and president of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association. Joseph Roy is the superintendent of the Bethlehem Area School District.
Learning Heroes will host a research webinar on effective ways to “communicate school performance and accountability information to parents and guardians in a manner that is accessible and actionable” under ESSA. Learning Heroes worked with Edge Research to “conduct multiple focus groups, surveys, and in-depth interviews with parents across five states with the goal of creating a model school report card that is both ESSA-compliant and parent/guardian-friendly.” The team also “developed a customizable school report card prototype for state education agencies based on the research.” Click here to register.
Teacher evaluations—both their role and the mechanics of carrying them out—are a politically fraught subject, and the Every Student Succeeds Act has kicked the dust up once again as states wrestle with how to comply with teacher-quality sections of the new law.
ESSA, which goes into effect this fall, does away with the “highly qualified teacher” mandates under its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act. It also bans the U.S. secretary of education from dictating the ways in which states grade their teachers, a sore spot under the NCLB law.
At the same time, ESSA requires …
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
How states and districts can use the Every Student Succeeds Act to support Linked Learning and other high-quality career pathways. Linked Learning, an innovative approach transforming high school education, combines four key components: Rigorous academics; Career-based learning in the classroom; Work-based learning; and Integrated student supports. Learn more at www.all4ed.org/essa.
WASHINGTON — Democrats sparred with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about the budget proposal from President Donald Trump that would direct $1.4 billion to expand school choice and sharply questioning her commitment to protecting students with federal vouchers from discrimination during a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Republicans questioned the education secretary more gently, focusing on special education and applauding the fiscal 2018 budget plan’s emphasis on new resources for school choice.
Democratic lawmakers pushed DeVos to explain why public schools wouldn’t suffer and lose out because of a proposed $1 billion in new Title I for public school choice, as well as $250 million for a new research program to study the impact of vouchers on needy students…
Recording of webinar – Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): How the New Federal Education Law Can Improve Access to Education for Juvenile Justice Involved Youth – held on January 27, 2016 hosted by Robert F. Kennedy Juvenile Justice Collaborative with technical support from Open Society Foundations.
This webinar features a discussion of changes to Title I, Part D of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and describes how ESSA can improve access to education for youth involved in or reentering from the juvenile justice system.
Presenters:
Kate Burdick, Juvenile Law Center
Simon Gonsoulin, National Technical Assistance Center for the Education of Neglected or Delinquent Children and Youth (NDTAC)
Christopher Scott, Open Society Foundations
Josh Weber, Council of State Governments Justice Center
Jenny Collier, Robert F. Kennedy Juvenile Justice Collaborative (moderator)
Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos delivered a much-anticipated speech about her plan to shift massive amounts of valuable taxpayer money away from public schools to pay for private school vouchers. That’s not exactly how she framed her ideas as she addressed the American Federation for Children (a pro-school privatization group chaired by DeVos until she was tapped to be Education Secretary). Instead, DeVos said the plan—details still to come—would amount to the “most ambitious expansion of school choice in our nation’s history.”
Voucher devotees like DeVos know this, which is why the term “school voucher” has been ditched in favor of less offensive, appealing terms.
Take for example this line from DeVos’ speech to the AFC. Praising Indiana’s large-scale voucher program, she promised to “empower states and give leaders like Eric Holcomb the flexibility and opportunity to enhance choices Indiana provides its students.”
In that one sentence alone, DeVos offers up four favorite euphemisms used to rebrand voucher legislation: “empower,” “flexibility,” “opportunity” and, of course, “choice.”
The Trump-DeVos budget would slash the federal investment in public education programs by a whopping 13.6 percent, while providing $1.4 billion in new spending on school voucher expansion. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
The intent is to obscure the fact that these spruced up proposals still produce the same result: less taxpayer money for public schools, more taxpayer money for unaccountable private schools that can, and do, discriminate.
The Trump budget request for fiscal year 2018 unveiled on May 23rd makes it clear that DeVos intends to deliver on this threat. NEA President Lily Eskelsen García calls the outlined education budget a “wrecking ball” to public education in service of a school privatization agenda.
“DeVos and Trump have made failed private school vouchers a cornerstone of their budget,” said Eskelsen García. “Vouchers do not work and they take scarce funding away from public schools—where 90 percent of America’s students enroll—and give it to private schools that are unaccountable to the public.”
As the details to DeVos’ plan become clearer in the coming weeks, expect to hear more about “opportunity,” “flexibility,” “tax credits,” “savings accounts,” “scholarships”—everything except “private school vouchers.” Here are a few programs touted by DeVos that, despite being smoothed out around the edges, are still at their core schemes to funnel taxpayer dollars from public schools to fund private and for-profit schools.
‘Tax Credit Scholarships’
These programs, which could be a centerpiece of the administration’s plan, currently exist in 17 states with more potentially ready to follow suit.
A tax credit scholarship incentivizes individual taxpayers or corporations to donate money to non-profit organizations that bundle the funds and disburse them (less their cut for administrative expenses) as private school vouchers. Donors are able to claim the donations as credits against their state tax liability and often can also claim those same donations as deductions to reduce their federal tax bill.
“Rather than include line-items in state budgets for spending on school vouchers, lawmakers ask taxpayers to undertake such spending on the state’s behalf, in return for a generous tax giveaway,” Davis recently wrote in The American Prospect.
Far from philanthropy, the individuals who make these donations can often get more in return than they gave by also claiming a federal charitable tax exemption—what Davis calls “double-dipping.”
Davis and others label these programs “neo-vouchers” because they still, through a more circuitous route, transfer taxpayer money to private schools.
‘Education Savings Accounts’
Another “back-door voucher” is an Education Savings Account (ESA). With ESAs, a portion of a state’s per-pupil education funding is put into an account that parents can tap into to pay for approved education expenses. This includes private school tuition and fees, textbooks, test prep services and tutoring, as well as a variety of other services, with no oversight over student outcomes.
In March, Arizona eliminated eligibility requirements from its existing ESA program. Initially aimed at students with disabilities and dubbed “Empowerment Scholarship Accounts,” the program is now open to virtually all students, and, as caps ease, could include as many as 30,000 public school students by 2020. The program allows parents to take 90 percent of the money that would have gone to their school district and spend it as they see fit. The program, says Arizona State Senator Steve Farley, is nothing more than an “ESA voucher debit-cards-for-all scheme.”
‘Opportunity Scholarships’
The Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program is the first and only federally funded school voucher program in the country. Created by Congress in 2004, the program provides vouchers to 1,100 low-income D.C. students, some of whom were already attending private school. Secretary DeVos would like to expand the program, ignoring a recent study that found that participants who used vouchers scored lower than their public school peers in both reading and math.
Lawmakers in North Carolina appropriated the term “opportunity scholarship” when they enacted a voucher program in 2013. The program was funded at $17.6 million in 2015-16, and up to $24.8 million in 2016-17. Meanwhile, public school funding in North Carolina has been slashed. In 2016, the state spent more than $12 million on these “scholarships,” which are expected to serve 32,000 students by 2026, at a cost of $134 million annually.
Tell Betsy DeVos: Your Voucher Plans Harm Students
Betsy DeVos’ goal as Secretary of Education is to slash funding for public schools, using voucher schemes to funnel taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools.A well-resourced public school in every neighborhood is our best bet for setting every student up for success. Email DeVos today. Tell her to focus on investing in public schools.
While there are no data to support the claim that voucher programs increase the opportunities for low-income children to attend higher-performing schools, there is considerable evidence that voucher programs increase the “opportunity” for more affluent families to receive public subsidies for private education. In Indiana, home to the largest voucher program in the nation, more than half of the state’s voucher recipients have never attended public schools, so Indiana taxpayers are subsidizing private school education for many students whose families could already afford it.
This slow but steady expansion of voucher programs is being duplicated elsewhere. It’s become a familiar story: voucher bills are rebranded and targeted towards specific populations—low-income students or students with special needs, for example—to make them more politically palatable. Once the legislation is implemented, eligibility requirements are soon eased, and funding is increased. Meanwhile, funding for public schools is further eroded.
“For too long, these schemes have experimented with our children’s education without any evidence of real, lasting positive results,” says Eskelsen García. “Improving public schools requires more money, not less, and public money should only be used to help public schools.”
East Stroudsburg Area School District and its taxpayers paid cyber charter schools $3.7 million last year. That total has climbed consistently for at least the last five years.
The Pennsylvania school code requires that all state funding follow a student regardless of his or her choice of school. Funds are allocated directly to public school districts. Then, charter schools seek a tuition reimbursement from the district that sends the student.
Public schools are obligated to pay, but institutions have clashed on how much. Calculations are currently based on the expenses of the sending school. They do not consider what it actually costs the charter school to educate a student.
“In my opinion, it’s destructive to the public education system,” said Principal Bill Vitulli of Smithfield Elementary School. “Is it reasonable to pay cyber charter schools who don’t have nearly the same costs we do?”
Vitulli also manages the district’s own cyber program, East Stroudsburg Area Cyber Academy. It currently has about 90 students enrolled full-time and closer to 60 attending part-time, he said. All classes are taught by district instructors.
“Cyber charter schools don’t really have any different expenses than we do in our program,” he said. “They might have to hire more staff, but they don’t have all the costs of building maintenance, sports teams or after-school activities.”
Vitulli estimated an annual cost of $2,500 to educate a single, nonspecial student in the district cyber program. He did not have an exact figure available, he said.
Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Bader said cyber academy costs are included in district’s other expenses; however, he estimated the program costs less than $4,000 a year per student.
Right now, the district pays charter schools $12,735 for each student or $29,731 for each special education student.
In October 2015, East Stroudsburg school district had 202 students enrolled in nine different cyber charter schools, according to Pennsylvania Department of Education records. That total includes 51 special needs students, who have higher tuition costs.
Commonwealth Charter Academy had the largest population of East Stroudsburg area students that year. CCA had 84 district students enrolled as of October, including 21 special education students. It remains one of the most attended by students from Monroe and Pike Counties for the last five years.
“Our costs aren’t the same; they’re just different,” said CEO Maurice Flurie, who formerly worked as assistant superintendent for Lower Dauphin School District.
“The general expectation is that it’s less, but that’s not necessarily true,” he said. “Some things cost exponentially more, like equipment maintenance or technology infrastructure.”
It costs CCA a little over $11,000 a year to educate a nonspecial student, Flurie said. CCA currently has more than 9,000 students enrolled across the state.
“We have costs no school district has,” he said. “When traditional schools have Keystone Exams or PSSA tests, kids ride the same buses to school — there’s no added costs. We have to put teachers on the road, rent spaces and feed staff. It costs us $800,000 to $1 million a year just to administer tests.”
Testing performance is one of the indicators used by the state Department of Education to measure educational effectiveness. Those numbers comprise a weighted score, called a School Performance Profile.
Online education programs generally have lower SPP scores than brick-and-mortar schools. Cyber charter schools scored an average of 50.9 between all 14 institutions operating in Pennsylvania.
CCA scored 47.5 during the last school year.
“We care about our kids making progress over time,” said Flurie. “In most cases, students come to us because something wasn’t working at their other school. That’s not appropriately reflected in an SPP score.”
About 72 percent of CCA students are at least one grade level behind at enrollment, Flurie also said. While about 80 percent return the next year, about 20 percent seek another institution.
“It doesn’t take into account the amount of kids leaving and coming in,” he said. “Some students plan on being with us just for middle school, so they’re going to test better as a ninth grader at a new school.”
East Stroudsburg had a district-wide SPP score of 69.6, based on the average results of its ten individual schools. Its cyber program does not have a separate score. Those students’ performances are reflected in the results of the physical school they would have attended.
“The general consensus is that cyber school isn’t necessarily the best way to teach,” said Principal Vitulli of East Stroudsburg’s program. “Success in cyber learning — even in our district — is not as good as being in a brick-and-mortar school.”
The program has grown substantially since he took over three years ago, Vitulli also said. He estimated the program on its own could likely rate well above the 50.9 average SPP cyber school score.
“It’s hard data to get,” he said. “You can’t compare because cyber schools are not being held to the same standards as brick-and-mortar schools.”
There were few fireworks Wednesday as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testified before a House appropriations subcommittee on the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal. DeVos deflected much of the skepticism she received and continued to push the administration’s support of school choice.
President Trump’s proposal, which has drawn sharp criticism from educators and lawmakers alike, calls for $1.4 billion to expand school choice — namely vouchers and charter schools — but slashes $10.6 billion from after-school programs, teacher training and federal student loans and grants.
In her opening statement, DeVos said Trump’s budget proposal would return power to states and school districts and give parents a choice in their child’s education.
Democrats, including New York Rep. Nita Lowey, accused DeVos of taking money from public schools to fund school choice.
“We’re not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools,” DeVos responded. “In fact, all of the proposals set forth in the budget commit to fully funding public schools as we have.”
“If you’re pouring money into vouchers, the money is coming from somewhere,” Lowey said.
Many Republicans, while upset about proposed cuts to career and technical training programs, expressed support for DeVos.
“We are beginning to see the early stages of a much-needed, robust discussion about how we begin the process of getting our federal budget under control,” Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said.
Democrats questioned DeVos about whether she would allow federal funds to go to private schools that discriminate against particular populations.
Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts brought up Lighthouse Christian Academy, a school in Bloomington, Indiana that receives $665,000 in state vouchers and denies admission to children of LGBT parents.
“Is there a line for you on state flexibility?” Clark asked.
“You are the backstop for students and their right to access quality education. Would you in this case say we are going to overrule and you cannot discriminate, whether it be on sexual orientation, race, or special needs in our voucher programs?” Clark added. “Will that be a guarantee from you to our students?”
DeVos sidestepped the question.
“The bottom line is we believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children’s schooling and education decisions,” DeVos said. “Too many children today are trapped in schools that don’t work for them. We have to do something different than continuing a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach.”
DeVos’s appearance before Congress was her first public seating since a rough confirmation hearing before the Senate back in January.
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Another “back-door voucher” is an Education Savings Account (ESA). With ESAs, a portion of a state’s per-pupil education funding is put into an account that parents can tap into to pay for approved education expenses. This includes private school tuition and fees, textbooks, test prep services and tutoring, as well as a variety of other services, with no oversight over student outcomes.
