The bill passed by the U.S. House to repeal the Affordable Care Act, now being considered by the Senate, would make deep cuts to Medicaid — which threatens millions in special education dollars for local school districts.
The money pays for items such as therapy equipment, portable stair climbers, or a device that might help visually impaired students do their schoolwork, as well as certain aides.
Medicaid, the health insurance coverage for low-income and disabled individuals that is jointly paid for by states and the federal government, reimburses schools for health-related services for special education students.
In Pennsylvania, schools receive about $143 million annually for these services.
Federal law requires schools to have individualized education plans for each special needs child and to provide appropriate services.
In other words, said Steve Robinson, spokesman for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, schools are mandated to meet the needs of special education students. The federal cuts would push costs to either the state or local communities.
“The state is going to be challenged to come up with those dollars,” he said.
“Under the proposed change, there could be restrictions to: hearing-impaired services, nursing services, occupational therapy services, personal care and physical therapy services, psychological and social work services, speech and language and specialized transportation services, among many other critical support systems,” said Casey Smith, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.
In a letter opposing the bill, the School Superintendents Association and a host of other organizations in the Save Medicaid in the Schools Coalition noted to congressional leaders that “school-based health services are mandated on the [s]tates and those mandates do not cease simply because Medicaid funds are capped by the [American Health Care Act]. As with many other unfunded mandates, capping Medicaid merely shifts the financial burden of providing services to the [s]tates.”
Pittsburgh Public Schools uses some of these funds to pay for things like care assistants for medically fragile students who might need one-on-one support and for programs such as the district’s CITY Connections, which helps students with disabilities ages 18-21, said Amy Filipowski, executive director of the program for students with execeptionalities at the district.
“We would lose that reimbursement as a district and have to fund that … on our own,” she said.
ACA is working well in Pennsylvania, state insurance commissioner tells U.S. senators
The bill, which cuts Medicaid spending by more than $800 billion, passed the House earlier this month in a narrow 217-213 vote.
San Antonio — As information about the academic struggles of Pennsylvania’s cyber charters has become more accessible, the full-time online schools have increasingly enrolled students from the state’s least-educated communities and most-disadvantaged school districts, according to a new study to be presented here Sunday as part of the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
The result, according to researcher Bryan Mann of Penn State University?
Cyber charter have become an inequitable corner of Pennsylvania’s school-choice system, leaving the state’s neediest students with another bad option that their peers from better-off school districts largely avoid.
“This may be the educational policy equivalent of asking someone in a food desert to pick between two fast food restaurants and hoping they make a healthy choice,” Mann wrote in a pre-conference email interview.
In Pennsylvania and across the country, full-time online charter schools have come under withering scrutiny. Studies by the Center for Research on Educational Outcomes at Stanford University have found at both the national and state level that students in the schools learn at a dramatically slower pace than their peers in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Last fall, Education Weekpublished a major investigation into the sector, highlighting concerns about students not using the schools’ educational software and about extensive lobbying efforts by the for-profit management companies that dominate the industry…
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Representatives of several education leadership associations recently released the 2016-17 State of Education report highlighting the many successes and challenges facing public education in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Paul M. Healey, Ph.D., PA Principals Association Executive Director, spoke at the news conference on April 24, 2017.
HARRISBURG — A proposed rewrite of the state charter school law would allow public schools to keep almost $30 million by adding deductions for costs that computer-based schools don’t have.
Democrats contend the state could provide five or 10 times as much relief for school districts if it more aggressively linked charter payments to the actual cost of educating their students.
In 2014-15 Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts paid about $1.5 billion in tuition to charter schools, according to Education Department data.
The legislation, authored by state Rep. Mike Reese, R-Westmoreland County, would create a special commission to examine how much districts should be paying to cyber schools.
The legislation would also make changes to the way the state oversees charter schools, how they are approved and how their teachers are rated.
“The reforms embodied in my legislation are critical to improving and strengthening our Charter School Law, which was groundbreaking upon its enactment in 1997 but has become outdated over time,” Reese said in a memo to other lawmakers.
Charter school operators think the deductions proposed by Reese’s bill are too drastic.
“We are happy with some of the provisions” in the legislation, said Ana Meyers, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools. “However, the cuts for cyber schools are steep.”
Her group hopes the new deductions are eliminated from the bill, Meyers said.
Overall, the legislation has largely shed most of the controversial elements, said Jonathan Cetel, executive director of the Pennsylvania Campaign for Achievement Now, an independent advocacy group lobbying for innovations to improve school performance.
“It reflects years of compromise and negotiation,” he said. “All that remains are commonsense policies that meet the needs of both charter schools and traditional public schools.”
Cetel added that he hopes the proposed commission would resolve the controversy over how much school districts should be paying to charters.
“I used to think a commission is what you did to kill an idea,” he said. But, Pennsylvania’s success with basic education funding and special education funding commissions suggest the approach can generate solutions, Cetel said.
Lobbyists on all sides of the issue agree it’s time the state update the charter law. But there is no consensus on how to do it and whether Reese’s legislation covers all the bases.
The most universally welcomed part of the proposal is the portion that would create the funding commission.
“We’d like to see something happen,” said Mark DiRocco, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators.
His group would like to see the funding commission created. They have reservations about a plan in the bill that would assess the performance of charter school teachers using a different process than the one used by teachers in conventional public schools.
The school administrators’ group has, thus far, taken a neutral position on the bill. It’s the same stance taken by the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials, said Hannah Barrick, director of advocacy for the business officials’ group.
One of the things the business officials’ group likes is that Reese’s proposal includes “immediate relief” for schools, even if it’s short of what school district leaders think they are over-paying to cyber and other charter schools, she said.
Pennsylvania’s current way of paying charter schools is based on the cost of educating each student in the conventional school system. There are now seven deductions intended to reflect that charters may not have all the costs of conventional schools. But those deductions aren’t enough, she said.
Many school districts have begun to run their own computer-based programs to provide an alternative to losing students to outside cyber schools. In those cases, school officials have found that their costs for computerized classes are at least half what they pay in tuition to cyber schools, Barrick said.
A big chunk of those overpayments are tied to special education costs, Democrats said Wednesday morning.
They estimate that charter schools receive almost $200 million a year in special education payments above the cost of teaching the special education students enrolled in their classes.
In Gov. Tom Wolf’s first year in office, he lobbied for reforms that would have saved school districts about $160 million on their charter school tuition bills, state Rep. Mike Sturla, R-Lancaster said. Sturla said charters are getting overpaid by as much as $300 million a year.
The special education overpayments come from two things, said state Rep. Mark Longietti, D-Mercer County.
Charter schools charge the local school district more in tuition for special education students. And local officials complain that students they hadn’t identified as needing special education are classified as special-ed students when they enroll in cyber school.
Second, the special education tuition rate is based on an average of the cost of providing services, and many of the students getting special education services in cyber schools are getting services that cost less than the average, he said.
Longietti was one of eight Democrats who authored bills intended to provide fixes to Reese’s legislation. The Democrats on Wednesday afternoon tried to get their bills amended into Reese’s bill on the House floor. Most of those amendments were rejected, though the House did add language suggested by state Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh County, that would bar charter schools from advertising that they offer free education and require them to say their costs are covered by tax dollars.
His bill now awaits a final House vote, which could happen as soon as next week. If passed in the House it would go to the Senate. Similar measures passed both the House and Senate in 2015, but the two chambers failed to reach a final agreement.
John Finnerty reports from the CNHI Harrisburg Bureau for The Meadville Tribune and other Pennsylvania newspapers owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. Email him at jfinnerty@cnhi.com and follow him on Twitter @cnhipa.
The PA Principals Association is one of 42 diverse groups 42 diverse groups from all over Pennsylvania that signed on to show support for the $2 million school breakfast initiative included in the state’s 2017-18 budget proposal. The letter urges Pennsylvania legislators to support the Governor’s budget proposal to make sure more students are getting school breakfast. Right now, 1 in 5 kids in Pennsylvania struggles with hunger. School breakfast is critical to ensure that kids get the basic nutrition they need, but too many kids who may need a school breakfast are missing out. Today, less than half of kids who qualify for in-school breakfast are actually receiving it. It doesn’t have to be that way. This is a solvable problem.
SCRANTON — As area students prepare for a second week of state tests, exams next year could look different.
The Every Students Succeeds Act, the federal education law signed by President Barack Obama in late 2015, replaces the No Child Left Behind Act and provides flexibility for states. Pennsylvania must submit its finalized plan to the U.S. Department of Education in September.
“It’s a great opportunity and a great responsibility,” Matthew Stem, the state’s deputy secretary of elementary and secondary education, said during a meeting last week in Scranton.
Each spring, third- through eighth-graders take Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams in English language arts and math. Fourth- and eighth-graders also take the science exams. High school students take Keystone Exams — end-of-course assessments in literature, biology and algebra. The state planned to make Keystone Exams a graduation requirement starting in the 2018-19 academic year, but that could change.
Ideas being reviewed by the state include:
Reducing total PSSA testing time by 20 percent, which could include the elimination of two sections of tests.
Testing students multiple times a year, instead of only in the spring. Some educators worry this would mean the state would dictate the order in which curriculum is taught in schools.
Eliminating double testing for eighth-graders, who take both the algebra Keystone Exam and eighth-grade PSSA.
Giving schools more control over intervention strategies, including allowing mental health and school safety measures as means to increase achievement.
Changing the way school success is measured by moving from School Performance Profile scores to a “Future Ready PA Index.” Along with achievement and growth indicators, schools would be judged by career standards benchmarks, postsecondary transitions and English language proficiency.
The state plans to have a draft of the plan available by early summer.
Assessments could change as early as next spring, with the first identification of schools in the bottom 5 percent — those that must implement intervention strategies — in fall 2018.
Few people attended the meeting in Scranton, held Tuesday evening at the Career Technology Center of Lackawanna County and aimed as a way for the public to provide feedback. CTC employees made up about half of the 10 attendees. Many educators said they were unaware of the meeting, and the Department of Education provided no advance notice to news media because of a “technology snafu,” a spokeswoman said.
The department sent an email invitation to about 400 people, Cheryl Bates-Lee, PDE press secretary, said.
The meeting in Scranton was the final in a series of events statewide for providing an opportunity to the public to learn more about the future of education policy related to ESSA.
Forest City Superintendent Jessica Aquilina, the only superintendent present at the meeting, called ESSA “a step in the right direction.”
Aquilina, who informed all Forest City parents about the meeting, said she appreciates the increased local control and the additional measures for accountability.
“A lot of educators are looking at readiness and what it means to be college and career ready,” she said. “Pennsylvania is taking some steps in the right direction.”
Abington Heights Superintendent Michael Mahon called ESSA a “step forward.”
“We’ve been doing too much testing for years,” Mahon said. “It’s unfair and counterproductive to be losing weeks of time for assessments. … We really do question the need to have a longer exam for the PSSAs than we do for graduate school exams.”
Pennsylvania Education Secretary Pedro Rivera, who nearly a month ago rejected the Erie SD’s $31.8 million financial recovery plan, is holding out hope that the district’s new plan will gain his support. But he said a lot must happen first.
A recent report by the Education Law Center found years of state underfunding has led to widespread inequalities in Pennsylvania public schools.
Titled “Money Matters in Education Justice: Addressing Race and Class Inequities in Pennsylvania’s Public School System” and released on March 3, the report found those inequalities are felt most by students of color and students in low-income communities.
“Of the funding we have and we do appropriate, Pennsylvania is doing it in ways that reinforce inequality,” said Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of the Education Law Center.
The Education Law Center is a nonprofit law firm that advocates for public school students. Klehr said the firm launched the study on fair education funding in 2013. Pennsylvania did not have a fair funding formula at the time, which helps the state find a way to distribute dollars to school districts equally.
“As we started looking at the data, what became so clear is the racial justice lens you need to see what’s happening,” Klehr said in an interview.
Pennsylvania ranks 46th in the nation when it comes to the state’s share of education funding. The report found the state is also “overly reliant” on local funding for schools. This is because Pennsylvania is one of 14 states that regressively funds schools.
Click here for full article. Source: KPVI Channel 6, March 10, 2017.
“On education, there is no state in the U.S. that is demanding the spotlight like Tennessee,” Haslam said. “It’s worth repeating: with the incredible hard work of our teachers and students, Tennesseans are the fastest improving in the country in math, reading and as of this year, science. This past October we received the science scores from the Nation’s Report Card, and beyond being the fastest improving, we narrowed the gaps between African American, Latino and white students. We also completely eliminated the gap between male and female students.”
Haslam was not ready to rest on his laurels. He announced one of the largest funding increases for education in Tennessee history, including $22 million in additional funding for high-need students, $15 million for equipment for career and technical education programs, and $100 million for an increase in teacher salaries.
“Tennessee has shown it will not balance the budget on the backs of teachers and students,” Haslam said. “In fact, under the legislature and this administration, Tennessee has increased total K-12 spending by more than $1.3 billion.”
Haslam also discussed his “Drive to 55” initiative, a goal that 55 percent of the state’s residents will have a college degree or certificate by 2025. A critical element to reaching that goal has been Tennessee Promise, which provides two years of free tuition at a Tennessee community or technical college.
“While it’s still early in the Tennessee Promise story, the results so far are incredibly encouraging,” Haslam said. “Since the program started, more than 33,000 students have enrolled in college as a result of Tennessee Promise, and of the students who began in fall 2015, 63 percent are still enrolled.”
Haslam noted that Tennessee last year led the nation in applications for free student aid by high school seniors through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and is ahead of last year’s rate in 2017. Additionally, he noted that 9,000 Tennessee adults are volunteer mentors to high school students, who have, in turn, contributed more than one million hours of community service.
At the same time, Haslam acknowledged that Tennessee cannot reach its Drive to 55 goal by just serving high school students. He proposed that Tennessee become the first state in the nation to offer all adults free access to community college through a program called Tennessee Reconnect.
“Just as we did with Tennessee Promise we’re making a clear statement to families with Reconnect: wherever you might fall on life’s path, education beyond high school is critical to the Tennessee we can be,” Haslam said. “We don’t want cost to be an obstacle anyone has to overcome as they pursue their own generational change for themselves and their families.”
Haslam also spent a significant portion of his speech discussing infrastructure—roads and bridges, yes, but also access to high-speed internet. “We live in a world where if you have a strong internet connection you can just about work from anywhere,” Haslam said. “If we’re serious about putting our rural counties on a level playing field, then opening up broadband access is one of the largest steps forward we can take.”
“The Tennessee we can be provides not only access to opportunity but the tools to be successful. Good roads that take you to good jobs. Broadband access to conduct and grow your business anywhere in Tennessee at the speed of the 21st century. A high-quality education system that educates all.”
Pennsylvania: Gov. Tom Wolf Works to Restore Previous Cuts to Education Funding
Saying that there should be “no greater priority” for the state government than educating its children, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (D)outlined a budget plan on February 7 that would provide $125 million more in K-12 education funding, part of a continued effort to restore a $1 billion cut from education enacted five years ago.
“Instead of allowing schools to become the first casualty of our budget deficit, we’ve made them our first priority,” Wolf said. “We’ve undone nearly two-thirds of those short-sighted cuts to our public school system. In fact, we’ve made the largest investment in education in the history of the Commonwealth.”
Wolf highlighted some of the progress schools have made as a result of those investments, including an expansion in career and technical education programs, advancement placement courses, and learning pathways programs that prepare high school students for careers in business, human services, and industrial technology.
Maryland: Gov. Larry Hogan Looks to Expand P-Tech High Schools
“We have already accomplished a great deal,” Hogan said. “But together, we can – and we must – do more. Every single child in Maryland deserves access to a great education, regardless of what neighborhood they happen to grow up in. Sadly, we still have students who are trapped in persistently failing schools.”
Hogan highlighted efforts to provide students with greater choice, including an increase in a voucher program that provides scholarships for certain students to attend a private schools and an expansion in charter schools. Specifically, Hogan cited P-Tech, which began as a partnership between IBM and a high school in Brooklyn in which students graduate with both a diploma and an associate’s degree in a field related to computers or engineering. Maryland began six such schools last year. In his address, Hogan committed to doubling that number in 2017.
Alabama: Gov. Robert Bentley Focuses on Middle School Students
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (R) set a goal in his state of the state on February 7 to address to “significantly increase” the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education by 2019.
To meet that goal, Bentley described how Alabama’s FUTURE Scholarship plan, which is modeled after the GEAR UP program, would identify seventh graders in the state’s poorest counties for tutoring, summer help programs, visits to college campuses, and financial planning.
“By the time they graduate high school, after they’ve met strict criteria, kept their grades up, and tapped into all available financial aid, we will pay their two-year college tuition,” Bentley said. “The FUTURE Scholarship Plan will not only educate and train our students, it will produce a pipeline of well-trained, well-educated talent for industries so those businesses can expand and grow.”
Jason Amos is Vice President of Communications at the Alliance for Excellent Education.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education will discuss the Every Student Succeeds Act and solicit feedback from education stakeholders and the community during a event scheduled for next week.
The ESSA goes into full effect in the 2017-18 school year and is the country’s primary K-12 education policy since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Questions discussed in the program will include: What can Pennsylvania do to innovate and take advantage of the flexibility to support Philadelphians and Philadelphia? Does the new federal administration signal major changes to ESSA implementation or will increased local control insulate states from federal influence?
The Education First Compact forum will be held from 7:45 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Thur., Feb. 2, at Pipeline Philly, 30 S. South 15th St., and will be hosted by the Deputy Secretary of Education Matthew Stem, along with Beth Olanoff, the special assistant to the Secretary and ESSA Lead Pennsylvania Department of Education. The Education First Compact is an initiative of the Philadelphia Education Fund, which brings together people to discuss issues affecting education in Philadelphia.
Paul L. Dunbar 8th graders visit Temple University
Students from Paul L. Dunbar Promise Academy visited the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University last week in an attempt to get them interested in healthcare. Students were involved in interactive workshops that included using ultrasound and electrocardiogram machines, human brain displays, CPR demonstrations, and a discussion on bone health.
The student government association at LKSOM partnered with two non-profit organizations, It Takes Philly and the Opening Doors Foundation to make the event happen.
More than 200 participant in Aspen Challenge
More than 200 students and educators from the School District of Philadelphia will take part a program that includes 20 high school teams of eight students in grades 9 to 12. The event is from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Wed., Feb. 1 at the Ballroom at Ben, 834 Chestnut St.
The Aspen Challenge, founded by the Aspen Institute in partnership with the Bezos Family Foundation, will offer a daylong youth leadership development forum where they will hear leaders pioneering change.
The event features Amir Khalaib Thompson (Questlove) from the Roots, Ezekial Emanuel, oncologist and bioethicist chair at the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, MK Asante, professor and poet, the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, coalition builder and founder of Rebuilding Every Community Around Peace, Komal Ahmad, founder and CEO of Copia, a company working that works to eradicate hunger, JT Reager, an earth scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center.
Nine neighborhood schools receive grants worth $4,300
The Philadelphia Public School Giving Circle Fund of The Philadelphia Foundation will give $4,300 in academic enrichment support to nine Philadelphia neighborhood schools. The Circle supports public elementary schools serving low-income students in neighborhoods with limited fundraising capacity.
The supported projects include:
Spring Garden Elementary School’s Family Fun Nights for academic enrichment in science, math and literacy.
Henry C. Lea Elementary School’s new math and reading curriculum for fifth graders.
Vare-Washington Elementary School for garden supplies.
Horatio B. Hackett Elementary School for back of the chair sacks for fifth graders to store and organize learning materials.
Southwark School’s reading books and literacy materials for students in the bilingual program.
Warren G. Harding School t o purchase five Chromebooks to supported blended learning.
James J. Sullivan Elementary School to purchase tickets for first graders to see Ambler Theater’s “Puss in Boots.”
S. Weir Mitchell Elementary School for 100 sets of headphones for use with Chromebooks.
Thomas K. Finletter Elementary School for four Ozobot robot kits to start an after school robotics club.
“This is an attempt to level the playing field a little bit and to also make us feel good,” said Andy Toy, a founding member of the Circle. “It’s not every person for themselves, it’s everyone working together.”
Brian Sims to host education forum Monday
On Monday, State Rep. Brian Sims (D-Phila.) will host an education forum at 7 p.m. on Jan. 30 at the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, 901 S. Broad St.
Principals from five neighborhood schools will participate. They include: April Brown from Waring Elementary, Zack Duberstein from Vare-Washington Elementary, Lisa Kaplan from Jackson Elementary, Dan Lazar from Greenfield Elementary and Lauren Overton from Meredith Elementary.
The panel includes: Maia Cucciara from Temple University, Eleanor Ingersoll, from the Queen Village Neighbors Association School and Youth Committee and of the Meredith Elementary School Advisory Council, Otis Hackney from the Mayor’s Office of Education, Ivy Olesh, Friends of Neighborhood Education and Deborah Gordon Klehr, the executive director of the Education Law Center.
“Together we’ll explore how entire communities can use their unique assets to support local public schools and move our vision for Philadelphia schools forward,” Sims said. “Dr. William Hite, the Philadelphia School superintendent, will kick off the forum and help us welcome panelists, parents and attendees.”
Chester Community Charter first in robot performance
The Mayor of Chester Thaddeus Kirkland and the City Council honored “The Bionic Beasts,” robotics team of the Chester Community Charter School. The team took home first place in Robot Performance, second overall out of 31 teams, and also won an award for mechanical design.
“The students on our robotic steam are exemplary role models, and show a glimpse of the talented, young minds our school is fostering within the Chester community,” said David Clark, the CEO of CCCS said.
The team is led by coach Daniel Aulisio, who founded the team in 2013. Seven students are on the team which used elements from mathematics, science and engineering to build their robots.
New school district breakfast food to be introduced
On Monday, the School District of Philadelphia will unveil a new student produced breakfast item to school cafeterias in the city. Rebel Crumbles, are healthy cakes filled with fruits and grains and were created by Rebel Ventures, a student run business with student entrepreneurs from different high schools.
For more than a year, students worked to develop the food recipe, test the product, market it to vendors and establish a partnership with the SDP’s Food Services to bring it to local schools.
National School Choice Week wrapped up
Last week was National School Choice Week, a week to highlight school choice. Some counties throughout the week celebrated the goal of raising public awareness of effective education options for children, however Philadelphia was not on the list.
“Students, parents, teachers and community leaders in Pennsylvania have a lot to celebrate during National School Choice Week,” said Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week. “Pennsylvania has long been a pioneer in providing diversity of K-12 education options for children and families.”
The week was an independent effort to spotlight other options including traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online learning and homeschooling.