St. Louis — State education chiefs are scrambling staff duties and outsourcing tasks such as data collection and school improvement efforts as they prepare for new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act—at the same time they cope with continued funding and staffing pressures.
ESSA, which goes into effect for accountability purposes next fall, is a mixed blessing in the view of state superintendents who have long asked for more flexibility to figure out on their own how best to improve student outcomes.
One big challenge: Budget cuts in recent years have left large swaths of state education departments squeezed on the capacity to carry out the training, data collecting, and innovation necessary to fully exploit that flexibility.
That tension was top of mind this month as the Council of Chief State School Officers gathered here for its annual policy forum…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) has announced the availability of the 2017-2018 Refugee School Impact Grant (RSIG). The RSIG grant is a competitive grant. Request for Applications will be announced through this PENN*LINK and posted on the Department Refugee Program website http://www.education.pa.gov/K-12/Refugee%20Education/Pages/default.aspx#tab-1. The Invitation to Apply (ITA) refugee application for the 2017-18 RSIG grant should be created and submitted via U.S. Mail or hand delivered.
The Refugee School Impact Grant (RSIG) is a competitive federal grant. The primary goal of Pennsylvania’s Refugee Education Program is to assist recently arrived refugee students and their families in adjusting to their school and community in a culturally and linguistically comfortable assimilated manner through the funding of the Refugee School Impact Grant (RSIG).Applicants must do the following:
Demonstrate creative and supportive activities to remove barriers for refugee students that will result in optimum progress in academic and social development.
Implement a holistic view of refugee students and their families with consideration of their past experiences/living conditions and current change of environment.
Focus services on new arrivals who are making initial adjustments and those who have been in the country for one year or less.
Strive for a culturally competent transition that is comfortable for all served refugee students and their families. Thus, this guiding transition will enable the refugees to move forward and adapt to a new and different cultural and linguistic environment.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) requires program funds to be used to:
Provide before/afterschool, summer, evening, and/or weekend programs;
Attend one state consultation and quarterly regional collaborative meetings; and
Serve school-age refugee students (5-18 years of age)and their parents who have lived in the United States for one year or less.
Refugee students who have been in the country less than three years at the beginning of the school year, and have academic and social adjustment needs are eligible for services funded by the RSIG. The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement recognizes that in some states, the age limit for high school education is older than 18 and, as such, may allow those eligible refugee students who are full-time high school students to be eligible for services under this announcement.
Due Date
Applications must be received by 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 8, 2017. No extensions will be granted. Emailed and faxed applications will not be accepted.
Period of Availability: Jan. 2, 2018 – Sept. 30, 2018
Amount of Funding Available
Grant awards will not exceed $70,546. Applicants will apply for funding for the Jan. 2, 2018-Sept. 30, 2018 grant term.
Funding amounts may be lower than the stated possible maximum, and will be dependent on the following:
The range and extent of services to students and their families as described in the complete proposed application; and
The proposed number ofnewly arrived refugee students making major initial adjustments and those that continue to face persistent challenges in school.
Funding Authorization
Section 412 (c) (1) (A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (8 U.S.C. §1522 (c) (1) (A)), as amended, includes the use of funds to support local school systems that are impacted by significant numbers of newly arrived refugee children.
Eligibility
Eligible applicants must be an entity that operates in one of the seven counties in Pennsylvania where over 93 percent of refugees have resettled over the past three years: Allegheny, Dauphin, Erie, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lehigh, and Philadelphia. Applicants may be:
Local education agencies (LEA) including public school districts and intermediate units;
Submission Process
Paper application: One signed original application plus two copies must be received by PDE by
3:30 p.m. on Dec. 8, 2017:
Application package mailing address:
Pennsylvania Department of Education
Attn: Pamela M. Kolega, Refugee School Impact Grant Program Officer
333 Market Street, 5th Floor
Harrisburg, PA 17126-0333
Note: No extensions will be granted
Please contact Pamela M. Kolega at pkolega@pa.gov or at 717-265-8964 with any questions related to the Refugee School Impact Grant (RSIG) program.
By JAMIE MARTINES of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
As darkness faded just after 7 a.m. recently, sleepy high school students across Allegheny and Westmoreland counties stood at bus stops or steered vehicles to school.
Others already were inside on the way to breakfast or study halls, while others were beginning their first academic classes of the day.
Districts in and around Pittsburgh, including some whose first bell rings at 7 a.m., are evaluating daily schedules as research and day-to-day experience make it increasingly clear that later start times could benefit students’ mental health and academic success.
“What we’re worried about is when you really start to look at the stress, it leads to things like depression, it leads to things like suicide, it leads to risk-taking behaviors,” said Robert Scherrer, superintendent in the North Allegheny School District. “And some of those are tied directly to sleep, in some cases, but they’re also mental health concerns.”
St. Louis — State education chiefs are scrambling staff duties and outsourcing tasks such as data collection and school improvement efforts as they prepare for new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act—at the same time they cope with continued funding and staffing pressures.
ESSA, which goes into effect for accountability purposes next fall, is a mixed blessing in the view of state superintendents who have long asked for more flexibility to figure out on their own how best to improve student outcomes.
One big challenge: Budget cuts in recent years have left large swaths of state education departments squeezed on the capacity to carry out the training, data collecting, and innovation necessary to fully exploit that flexibility.
That tension was top of mind this month as the Council of Chief State School Officers gathered here for its annual policy forum.
With all their ESSA accountability plans now submitted to the U.S. Department of Education for approval, state education agencies in the coming months move into the implementation phase, which has the potential to be more arduous and politically contentious than the planning phase that took place over the previous two years…
Governor Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvania Department of Education proposed Computer Science for All standards for schools in the State.
During a State Board Education meeting, the Education Department highlighted the significance of making computer science available for all students.
In a statement, Gov. Wolf underlined the reality that the economy is constantly changing. He said over the next decade, seven in ten new jobs in Pennsylvania will require workers to use computers and new technologies.
He also emphasized, “Businesses are growing in Pennsylvania and we know they need skilled workers. We must begin to prepare students now by establishing standards for computer science education in Pennsylvania schools.”
The governor wants students in the State to have the skills they need for the emerging high-demand jobs. According to him, students armed with computer science skills will support middle class families and attract new businesses.
POTTSTOWN >> People objecting to Pennsylvania’s status as the state with the widest gap between funding for rich and poor school districts have argued that a zip code all-too-often determines the quality of a student’s education.
Apparently the color of a student’s skin matters even more.
New research has found that the less white a district’s students are, the more unfair the funding gap in state basic education dollars.
The discovery was made by two separate fair funding advocacy groups as they began applying Pennsylvania’s new “fair funding formula” to the finances of the state’s 500 school districts.
Because the state is only putting 6 percent of its total education funding through the formula, researchers at the Education Law Center and POWER (Philadelphia Organized to Witness Empower and Rebuild) wanted to see what funding would look like for poorer districts if all the state’s education funding were distributed using the formula.
As expected, they found that applying the formula to all state funding would significantly change the education dynamic in Pennsylvania for poorer districts, boosting state aid and, consequently, opportunity for students who generally begin school further down the learning curve than their wealthier peers.
But they also found that while poverty is certainly a factor statewide in determining how much per-student aid a school district gets, it turns out to be less of a predictor than race…
Pennsylvania teens and young adults with disabilities now have access to a free app designed to help them find jobs, manage their needs and get on track to living independently.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration and the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania announced the app’s rollout Wednesday afternoon in Downtown Pittsburgh.
“This new app prepares students for their future in either post-secondary education or employment (by) offering them access to information, education and training resources, and eventually success in a job that pays,” said David DeNotaris, executive director for the state Department of Labor & Industry’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation.
Nearly six in 10 of students with disabilities can’t find jobs after high school or give up looking, according to the Campaign for What Works, a statewide coalition that advocates for youths with special needs.
THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION — This post is from blogger Jillian Luchner, who is a Policy Associate with the Afterschool Alliance. The Afterschool Alliance is a nonprofit public awareness and advocacy organization working to ensure that all children and youth have access to affordable, high-quality afterschool programs.
The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the long-awaited successor to No Child Left Behind, creates a unique framework for school boards, teachers, administrators and communities to work together to make sure all children have access to high-quality, well-rounded education.
At the NSBA’s January 19 forum, “Public Education Agenda for America’s Success,” panelists discussed how the new law, new administration, and new Congress would affect education across the nation. Despite some level of uncertainty, panelists spoke to how school boards and local – even family level -decision making could be expected to play a larger role than in the recent past. When asked specifically about what school boards might do, much of the panelists’ conversation focused on the regular school day, but panelist Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute noted that afterschool programs are a time-tested, research-based part of the solution that should not be overlooked.
Afterschool and summer programs across the nation have a strong history of supporting school systems’ efforts to provide students with a well-rounded education that puts them on the path to wellness and success. These out-of-school-time programs provide students with educational opportunities, enrichment activities, access to physical activity and nutritious meals and snacks, as well as opportunities to build leadership and social connections. Notably, afterschool programs do all that during what’s sometimes called “prime time for juvenile crime” – the afternoon hours when children are most likely to be either perpetrators or victims of crime and when working parents worry most about their children’s safety.
Research shows that students who regularly attend quality afterschool programs improve their academics, have better school attendance and are more likely to graduate. Moreover, , the Afterschool Alliance’s recurring, nationally representative parent survey, consistently finds that parents strongly support afterschool programs. In the 2014 survey, the most recent, 89 percent of parents with a child in a program reported being satisfied with the program. In addition, 84 percent of all parents supported public funding for afterschool, while more than 7 in 10 said they think afterschool programs reduce the chance that their child will participate in risky behavior. Additionally, 80 percent of parents report that their children’s programs offer students opportunities for physical activity, and three in four parents are happy with the healthy snacks their student’s program provides. Despite high demand, for every child enrolled in an afterschool program, the parents of two more children say they would sign their children up, but cannot either because a program isn’t available or because it isn’t affordable.
District school boards often play an important role in leveraging resources to expand access to afterschool and summer opportunities. Afterschool and summer programs are frequently operated as a partnership among community nonprofits and school districts, with funding from federal, state and local sources as well as businesses, foundations, parent fees and other contributions. The average 21st Century Community Learning Center (a federally funded program that supports competitive grants in every state) has nine partner organizations with which it coordinates, which contribute in financial and in-kind support.
Across the nation, school system partnerships with afterschool programs have expanded opportunities for students while helping districts meet their goals for student success and family involvement.
The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Public School System has an out-of-school-time office that works with 80 different district partners to oversee summer programming for thousands of district students. Using research-based systems of support, the office coordinates closely with out-of-school time providers in the district and supports data, quality and systems-building to meet the city’s goals of graduation and college- and career-ready students.
In the early 1990s, the Corbin Independent School District (Kentucky) created the Redhound Enrichment afterschool program after conducting a community needs assessment in the district. Originally focused on providing a much-needed safe place for children in the afternoon hours, the program subsequently expanded its offerings to include more academic components, with the support of a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant. Twenty-five years later, the program is still in operation, employing a project-based learning model to provide a mix of academic supports, hands-on activities, physical activity and opportunities to primary and secondary students.
In Redwood City, CA the district builds partnerships with non-profit and private providers including youth centers, parks and recreation, Boys and Girls Clubs and the YMCA to offer afterschool opportunities. The programs give children opportunities for academic support, developing new skills and relationship building as well as other opportunities. Parent surveys show 97% satisfaction with the programs.
Such efforts are the tip of the iceberg, as afterschool programs across the nation work with school districts to promote student success.
With the Every Student Succeeds Act going into full implementation this year, now is a perfect time for districts to coordinate more closely with afterschool and summer learning programs. Final state plans are due to the federal Department of Education in either April or September and many state drafts (see our map) are out now. As part of that process, school districts will engage parents and other community stakeholders to consider how to meet state goals for improving graduation rates, academic achievement and student engagement and reducing chronic absenteeism.
Afterschool and summer programs are well-poised to help meet all these goals, and the 50 statewide afterschool networks stand ready to help connect school districts with afterschool and summer learning programs in their communities.
Jillian joined the Afterschool Alliance team as a Policy Associate in 2015. Her work involves tracking trends in afterschool policy and programs at the state and federal level and communicating successful and innovative approaches toward supporting youth during out-of-school time. Jillian worked for years as a teacher and afterschool educator in the Washington D.C. region. She also served as an AmeriCorps VISTA and community development director in California’s Central Valley. She holds undergraduate degrees in Economics and Geology and a Master’s in Public Policy specializing in education from the University of Maryland at College Park.
Washington – When the Every Student Succeeds Act passed in 2015, there was widespread worry that states would walk away from making sure that particular groups of students, English-language learners, students in special education, and racial minorities, mattered in their school accountability systems.
Now that pretty much every state has filed its plan to implement the law have those fears become the reality?
States are working to make sure that’s not the case, said several state chiefs who spoke on a panel here moderated by Chris Minnich, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. (Some advocates are skeptical more…
St. Louis — State education chiefs are scrambling staff duties and outsourcing tasks such as data collection and school improvement efforts as they prepare for new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act—at the same time they cope with continued funding and staffing pressures.
