Changes in 529 college savings plans allow families to use funds for K-12 tuition
Families with children enrolled at Winchester Thurston School have not begun asking how they can use 529 plans to pay the private school tuition, but administrators at the Shadyside-based private prep school believe that’s only because many of them still have unanswered questions.
“While the new federal tax law has made provisions for families to use 529s for K-12 education, the state of Pennsylvania is still determining how it will treat these withdrawals from a tax perspective,” said Nancy-Rose Netchi, director of marketing and communications at Winchester Thurston School.
“We expect some families may choose to exercise the 529 option if they find it’s beneficial to them after consulting with their tax adviser,” she said. “From our perspective, the new 529 provision simply gives some families an additional vehicle they can use to invest in an independent school education.”
While the federal tax overhaul made withdrawals for K-12 tuition tax-free, 529 plans are administered by states, and not every state law automatically complies with the new rules. The problem is some state legislation specifies that a 529 plan must be used for “higher education,” while other states simply follow the federal code.
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Despite funding increases under Wolf, Pa. school districts still ‘treading water’
In announcing a budget plan that included more money for Pennsylvania schools, Gov. Tom Wolf this week trumpeted the growth in state education spending during his tenure.
“The first thing I did when I got to Harrisburg was to draw a line in the sand on education,” Wolf told lawmakers during Tuesday’s budget address, as he declared that investments in schools were paying off.
But the tide of expenses continues to wash over that line, school officials say.
“Districts are still pretty much just treading water,” said Mark DiRocco, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, citing increasing costs for pensions, special education, and charter-school payments.
If Wolf’s plan for next year is enacted, it will increase the state’s main pot of money for schools to nearly $6.1 billion, an increase of just under 10 percent since he took office in 2015…
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Virtual Reality for Learning Raises High Hopes and Serious Concerns
AJ Mast for Education Week
London and Philadelphia — Is virtual reality finally ready to make inroads in K-12?
Technology companies are making a fresh push, and some market dynamics could provide them a tailwind. But there’s plenty of reason to remain skeptical.
That’s the takeaway from Education Week’s reporting from two conferences last month: Bett, a global ed-tech trade show hosted in London, and EduCon, a gathering of progressive educators and technology enthusiasts in Philadelphia.
Reasons to be bullish include new hardware advances, falling prices, and a wave of districts that will soon be looking to replace their existing computers and laptops. As a result, more than 15 percent of U.S. schools will have virtual-reality classroom kits by 2021, predicts Futuresource Consulting, a U.K.-based market-research firm.
“You’re going to see increasing adoption of this immersive technology,” said Ben Davis, a senior analyst for the group.
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PENNSYLVANIA: School District of Lancaster seeks to address racial gap in suspensions
(Harrisburg) — Over the past two-and-a-half years, out-of-school suspensions in the School District of Lancaster dropped by 42 percent. However, a sharp disparity exists between who gets suspended.
African Americans make up 17 percent of the district’s student body, but they account for more than 30 percent of suspensions.
For other racial groups, the suspension rate is either proportional or lower than the population.
Superintendent Damaris Rau says the gap became clear when administrators reviewed suspension data last summer.
Now, she says, they’re taking a closer look at the root causes of suspension.
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PENNSYLVANIA: Act 45 Program: Quality School Leadership Identification (QSLID) Process
The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is offering a training opportunity to districts seeking a competency-based approach to hiring principals. Registrants may elect to learn 30 Act 45 hours for participation in the training.
Research tells us that hiring the right principal is critical to school improvement, particularly in the lowest performing schools. With the right principal in place, student achievement can dramatically advance, and schools can retain effective teachers. Principal leadership is the second most influential school-level factor impacting student learning; no school has ever turned around without a strong principal leading the way. Securing the right principal lends itself to consistent leadership. The Quality School Leadership Identification (QSLID) process is an opportunity to create a hiring system that will retain effective school leaders.
PDE and the American Institutes for Research have developed a process for school districts seeking a competency-based approach to hiring principals in turnaround and non-turnaround school contexts. While QSLID was originally designed for the hiring of principals, a parallel process has been designed for the hiring of teachers. Upon completion of the course, participants will walk away with a complete hiring process and district-specific documents and protocols for both teachers and principals.
This program includes one day of face-to-face training, pre-scheduled webinars, journal/feedback reflections, and documentation of QSLID implementation.
Note dates and locations below:
- PaTTAN Malvern – March 13, 2018 (Snow date: March 19)
- Baldwin-Whitehall School District – March 5, 2018 (Snow date: March 27)
To register: Contact Melanie Novak at melnovak@pa.gov
Registration deadline: February 9, 2018
Questions? Contact Jean Dyszel at c-jdyszel@pa.gov
Inside the ESSA Plans: What Are States Doing About Goals and Timelines?
By Stephen Sawchuk, Alyson Klein, and Andrew Ujifusa
EDUCATION WEEK — This week, Education Week is bringing its trademark analysis to the remaining state plans for fulfilling requirements of the Every Student Succeeds law. On Monday, we had a look at the states’ proposed “school quality” indicators, the required but nonacademic portion of each state’s plan to judge schools. Today, we’re going to take a look at states’ goals for raising student achievement and their timelines for doing so in the plans awaiting federal approval.
One thing we’ll keep stressing again and again this week: how far federal policy has moved since the days of the No Child Left Behind Act (ESSA’s predecessor). Read on.
So, what kinds of goals are states setting?
Some states chose fixed goals that aim for all students, and all subgroups of vulnerable students, such as those qualifying for subsidized school lunches or English-language learners, to reach the same target (such as 80 percent proficiency). What’s nice about this kind of goal is that it sets the same endpoint, making it easier to see over time how achievement gaps are expected to close. States in this category include: Arkansas, Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi, (grades 3-8 only), Ohio, Minnesota, New York, Rhode island, South Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Source: Education Week Politics K-12
Pennsylvania adopts computer science ed standards
By DEBRA ERDLEY, triblive.com
PENNSYLVANIA — After a year of debate, Pennsylvania’s State Board of Education has approved a resolution to offer computer science education to all public school students in the commonwealth by endorsing Computer Science Teacher Association K-12 Standards.
Gov. Tom Wolf, who sought the change, applauded the move.
“Over the next decade, seven in 10 new jobs in Pennsylvania will require workers to use computers and new technologies in a constantly changing economy, and this move will help our students prepare for the workforce of the future,” Wolf said.
In the past, computer science offerings varied from school to school…
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Trump Ed. Dept. Wants Improvements to ESSA Plans for California, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Two Other States
Arkansas, California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas need to make some big improvements to their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, according to letters released publicly Friday by the U.S. Department of Education.
The most important letter is probably California’s. It’s a huge population center, and its plan, which relies on a dashboard to track school accountability, is either one of the most innovative and holistic in the country or one of squishiest and most confusing, depending on who you talk to.
The feds gave the Golden State a long, long list of things to fix. For one thing, the department says, it’s not at all clear from California’s plan that academic factors (like test scores) will count for more than school quality factors (like discipline data), an ESSA requirement. California wants to handle schools with low test participation by simply noting the problem on the state’s dashboard. The feds aren’t sure that meets the law’s requirements. And California told the department that it plans to finalize its method for identifying the lowest-performing schools in the state in January of 2018. The feds say they need it explained before they can greenlight California’s plan.
California also doesn’t have clear “interim” or short-term goals for English-language proficiency. It’s also unclear how the state will calculate suspension rates, which California wants to use to gauge school quality and student success. The state also needs to better spell out how it will make sure disadvantaged children get access to their fair share of effective teachers.
California has a long history of bucking the department. The state faced off with the Obama administration on student data systems, teacher evaluation, and more. So it will be interesting to see how many of these changes California makes, and whether the state will be approved even it doesn’t significantly revise its plan. A number of states that turned in their plans this spring didn’t make changes the department asked for, and got the stamp of approval anyway…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Edweek has some great tools for understanding and tracking ESSA plans here.
Source: Education Week Politics K-12
A Tale of Two States: Education Funding in PA and NJ
By Stephen Herzenberg for THIRD AND STATE: A progressive take on public policy in Pennsylvania
A new “big-data” base on U.S. school districts provides new evidence that Pennsylvania has many high-performing schools but many lower-income rural and urban districts that perform less well. A likely culprit: Pennsylvania’s inadequate state funding for schools. Low state school funding leaves moderate- and lower-income districts poorly funded and with less in total funding than affluent districts, even though the lower-income districts serve students with higher rates of poverty, non-English speaking families, and other challenges that hold back achievement. Most school districts in neighboring New Jersey perform well regardless of their income and wealth, thanks in part to more generous and equitable state funding for schools of moderate means.
The new data base, the Stanford Education Data Archive will be a gold mine for education researchers and policymakers. While waiting for definitive studies, we take a first look here at what the data base offers based on a New York Times story and interactive on-line tool posted earlier this month.
The story highlighted that the Chicago Public Schools delivered one of the highest improvements in student test scores from 3rd grade to 8th grade between 2009 and 2015. Its interactive tool allows users to enter a school district, and to extract information on how that school and 19 comparison districts in the same state performed over this period. The comparison districts change each time you use the tool, even if the school district you enter stays the same. The basic picture of how the school district entered performs relative to other districts does not change, suggesting that the researchers have been careful to make the other districts a “representative” comparison group.
We used the tool to examine the performance of Pennsylvania school districts. We then used the tool to generate information on New Jersey school districts. The table profiles Philadelphia and 19 other Pennsylvania school districts.
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