Posts tagged Education Empowerment Act

Like the namesake of this classic western – there is a showdown on the horizon.

The Pennsylvania Senate will reconvene on Monday, June 7, 2010. Their current agenda includes a second consideration for SB 1192, Printer’s No. 1871 (Sponsors: Picolla, Dinniman, Browne, Earlle, Rafferty, Williams, Boscola and Alloway).

Unquestionably, all eyes of an array of public education groups and advocates will be clearly focused upon Harrisburg; as deliberations begin to take place on this proposed reauthorization of PA’s Education Empowerment Act.

SB 1192 - An Act amending the act of March 10, 1949 (P.L.30, No.14), known as the Public School Code of 1949, further providing for definitions; and providing for empowering the Department of Education, school districts, schools and parents of school children to undertake measures necessary to improve the academic performance of students.

Scroll down to page 41 to the start of the major changes:

Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1192

The Good

• The bill attempts to deal with the schools and districts that are struggling the most.
• The bill includes charter schools and vocational-technical schools in the reform system.
• The bill contains long lists of education reforms that could help many schools and districts.
• The bill addresses options for parent and community involvement in improving public education.
• The bill allows districts to form their own charter schools rather than using outside companies.

The Bad

1. The bill does not provide any additional funding or resources to pay for and sustain reforms and does not fix the unfair property tax system. Most failing schools are in districts that have been under-funded for decades and have very high property taxes that drive away businesses. Ironically, revisions to the bill made in April now give extra funding for six of the current empowerment districts but ignore the fiscal needs of the hundreds of additional schools and districts that would fall under the control of the bill.

2. The bill would lower the standards and make it easier to place individual schools and school districts under the Empowerment Act.

• Currently, the Act uses a two-year average of both reading and math test scores and targets districts (not individual schools) with more than 50 percent of all students failing both tests (scoring “below basic”).
• SB 1192 would incorporate most of No Child Left Behind’s adequate yearly progress system of measuring school and district performance. The NCLB system looks at whether different subgroups of students – not just all students averaged together – score below state targets. A school would fall under the Empowerment Act if too many students failed the test – 44 percent failing in math or 37 percent failing in reading – by scoring at either “basic” or “below basic” levels.
• The U.S. Congress is expected to make major changes to NCLB in 2010 or 2011 that will impact these standards and requirements. Revisions to SB 1192 made in April would make it somewhat easier for the proposed empowerment system to interact with the expected changes to NCLB. But SB 1192 remains committed to using only student test scores to measure school and district performance, rather than multiple measures that better reflect student outcomes.

3. The bill would place hundreds of schools and dozens of school districts under the Empowerment Act. Currently, the Act only applies to whole districts, not individual schools.

4. The bill would look back in time and apply reform mandates based on past failures over many years. Schools and districts would be graded based on the number of years currently in school improvement and corrective action status under No Child Left Behind.

5. The bill would end the currently appointed boards for Chester-Upland and Harrisburg, return day-to-day management to the local elected school boards, and require all management and reform decisions to be initiated, amended, or approved by the new Statewide Control Board.

The Ugly

6. The bill would give state officials power over all of the schools and districts coming under the Act, even schools and districts failing for just two years.

• The PA Department of Education would have legal authority to order the reforms it wanted at hundreds of schools and districts under the Act. Local officials could not override the decisions of the Department.
• The improvement plans for schools and districts could be amended by the Department, without the consent of local officials.
• A Statewide Control Board appointed by the Governor and the Senate leader would write the reform plans for and have final authority to amend and approve the management decisions of locally elected school boards in districts failing for nine or more years (beyond the fourth year of “Corrective Action II”). The time period would start running based on NCLB status from 2001 to date.
• This means that the Senate leader and the Governor, who appoints the Secretary of Education and other Department officials, would essentially run all of the schools and districts subject to the Act.

7. The bill would treat Philadelphia differently than the rest of the state. No changes would occur to the current governance structure or reform systems.

8. The bill would strongly encourage the operations of failing schools and districts to be turned over to charter school companies or to private education management organizations. The Pennsylvania Department of Education and the new Statewide Control Board would have the power to impose these changes or even to close the school or district. This could have the immediate effect of taking many schools out of their districts and taking the teachers at these schools out of their unions.

9. The bill allows local school officials to hand-pick parents to participate on school improvement teams and does not allow parent elections. In contrast, teachers would be elected by their peers to the improvement teams.

10. The bill does not give students a voice or a role in the school reform process.

Source: Education Law Center

Earlier this week, I received a copy of the following letter [below] from several statewide education advocacy groups through a legislative email distribution group for school board members.

This document originates as joint statement from the AFT Pennsylvania, Education Law Center, Education Voters of Pennsylvania, Good Schools Pennsylvania, Media Area Branch of the NAACP, Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, Pennsylvania League of Urban Schools, Pennsylvania School Boards Association and the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

The following spreadsheet of districts and schools and was prepared by the Education Law Center to illustrate the potential impact of SB 1192.