The state Senate Education Committee is going to make a mid-session personnel change. Erie County Republican Senator Dan Laughlin is officially moving from the Education Committee to the Community, Economic, and Recreational Development Committee. It has been announced that his replacement will be Rich Alloway, a Republican Senator from Franklin County. The result of such a move is likely to have significant consequences for SB 2, a bill that would allow students in the lowest-performing public schools to use the money the state would have spent on their education for other school options, including private schools. Sen. Laughlin has been a key opponent of SB 2 and a big reason the bill failed by a single vote to get to the Senate floor in October. Alloway is one of the bill’s co-sponsors.
Category: Government Actions
Senate Ed Committee Approves Alternative Grad Requirements
The Senate Education Committee has approved Senate Resolution 248, which opposes the use of the Keystone Exams as a graduation requirement and urges PDE to come up with alternative methods of assessment to show graduation readiness and that align with IDEA and ESSA. That means that those methods of assessment must provide accommodations to students permitted to have such, that the assessments are developed in keeping with principles of universal design, and that the assessments meet the PA Career Ed and Work Standards or are valid and reliable measures of the PA Core Standards for Algebra I, English Lit, and biology in ways comparable with the Keystones.
PA Senate Reauthorizes CHIP
On Monday, December 11, 2017, in a 43-6 vote, the PA Senate passed a bill to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through 2019. The CHIP program provides health insurance to children in financially strapped families whose income is too high to qualify for standard Medicaid programs. The bill now goes to Governor Wolf for his signature.
Re-authorization became controversial and political rankling has occurred since Governor Wolf moved to expand the program to include transgender services, which was left unchanged in the final bill.
Federal funding covers approximately 90 percent of the $450 million cost of Pennsylvania’s CHIP program and that funding is at risk without Congress approving reauthorization on the national level.
HB 1386 Looks to Reset Teacher Cert. Levels
House Bill 1386, which was passed by the House in October, revises the scope of teacher certification levels to revert to the following levels:
- Early childhood: pre-k, kindergarten, grades 1-4 (ages 3-9)
- Elementary: kindergarten, grades 1-6 (ages 4 -11)
- Middle: grades 6 -9 (ages 11-15)
- Secondary: grades 7 – 12 (ages 11 -21)
- Specialized areas: pre-k – grade 12 (up to age 21)
- Special education: pre-k -grade 12 (up to age 21) Certification in an additional content area is not required.
The bill reverts certification levels to those prior to 2013. The bill is now in the Senate Education Committee for further consideration.
PSSA Testing Schedule is Officially Shortened for 2018-19
Governor Tom Wolf announced that the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) will be condensed from to two weeks from three weeks. He also confirmed that the PSSA exams will take place during a three-week testing window, which will begin April 9, 2018. The later date will provide additional instruction time.
The new schedule supplements changes taking effect in 2017-18 that removes two sections of the PSSA, one in math and one in English language arts. There is also a reduction in the number of questions in the science assessment. Removing the two sections of the assessment has reduced the amount of classroom time by an average of two days in most schools. This has allowed PDE to shorten the test window to two weeks and to provide school districts the flexibility to begin the assessment as late as April 25 in future years. Since school districts have already established their school calendar for 2017-18, the new testing window will begin with the 2018-19 school year.