News & Action Items

State to child services provider: Compensate families

Following a month-long investigation, the Pennsylvania Department of Education recently issued its findings on a complaint against Elwyn, Inc. brought by the Education Law Center and the Disability Rights Network.

Elwyn, Inc. is the service that contracts with the state to provide Early Intervention services to more than 5,000 Philadelphia preschoolers. The state's investigation found problems with the timeliness and thoroughness of Elwyn's service, and ordered several remedies for families who have been shut out of those services.

Read the one-page summary and the full report.

Share your experiences with Elwyn on our Discussion Forum — PASchoolTalk.org.

Budget deal barely holds the line for Pa. public schools

HARRISBURG - The 2010-11 state education budget agreement expected to be signed next week barely holds the line for public schools in Pennsylvania. The General Assembly relied heavily on federal stimulus dollars to avoid a fiscal disaster for struggling school districts.

Last year, state dollars for Basic Education – the biggest item in the state education budget – were cut nearly to 2007-08 levels. The 2010-11 budget restores $250 million of this shortfall, but still leaves state funding for basic education $104 million short of 2008-09 levels.

“Although we're pleased the Governor and the General Assembly increased state funding over last year, basic education funding remains three years out of date,” said Baruch Kintisch, Director of Policy Advocacy for the Education Law Center. More...

More 2010 budget information from the Education Law Center:

Join the conversation: How will your district react to the budget?

HB 704 Passes the House
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted 173 to 25 in favor of House Bill 704, the bill on special education funding and accountability reforms. Thank you to everyone who made phone calls and signed our petition. To learn more about the legislation and next steps, go to http://reformspecialedfunding.org.

ELC applauds Interbranch Commission's critique of 'zero-tolerance' school discipline policies
The Commission was formed in response to the "kids for cash " juvenile court scandal in Luzerne County. Read more...

The English Language Learner Task Force completed a successful year, with some gains at the state level and some projects for the future. See our ELL Task Force page for a year-end report.

Altering the Empowerment Act: Necessary reform or state takeover?
The Senate Education Committee has approved a significantly altered Education Empowerment Act (SB 1192), which would dramatically increase state control over local schools and local school districts. Read more...

New report: Pennsylvania must improve alternative education
Pennsylvania's alternative education schools serve more than 30,000 students, yet there is little information available on how these programs are run. Read the Education Law Center's full report or the executive summary.

Lawsuit boosts school access for PA's homeless students
A lawsuit settled recently in Pennsylvania by the Education Law Center and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP) ensures the continued enrollment of homeless children in school and significantly revises state polices to better protect the rights of homeless students.

Help Find Co-sponsors for a Resolution on School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports
On March 24 the PA House Education Committee unanimously approved HR 674, calling for the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to study the use of School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports in Pennsylvania and other states.

The resolution also directs the LBFC to evaluate the effectiveness of SWPBS in states where it has been implemented, identify costs and existing funding sources, recommend how to expand and fund SWPBS in Pennsylvania, and compile and distribute a report for the House of Representatives. Representative Roebuck has issued a co-sponsorship memo which you can read here.

ELC Releases Analysis of PA Empowerment Act Reauthorization
SB 1192 — the bill that would reauthorize the Education Empowerment Act — has serious flaws, according to an Education Law Center analysis. "The bill reflects an understandable impatience with the pace of education reform in Pennsylvania. But SB 1192 takes the wrong approach in addressing this difficult situation. The bill would impose empowerment status on dozens of school districts and hundreds of individual schools in additional communities. And the bill puts the state in charge of managing school-level reforms in all of these places. That won’t work."

Introducing: SchoolVictories.org

There’s a lot of good education advocacy and organizing work being done right here in Pennsylvania and in other states throughout the country. There’s also, though, a void in how good advocates and organizers connect to each other.

The Education Law Center, with the support of the Ford Foundation and the William Penn Foundation, has created a new tool to fill that void.

SchoolVictories.org is a tool to help you plan your school improvement work, share that work with others, and get inspired. It’s more than a Web site — it’s a new way to connect people and actions.

Whether you're working on a school funding campaign, advocating for smaller class sizes in your district, researching the new teacher contract, or simply looking to connect with groups working on the same issue, SchoolVictories.org can help.

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