Saturday, September 24, 2016
Pa.'s first charter school serving students with dyslexia set to open
"After six years of planning, a challenge in court and a volley of appeals, Brett Marcoux isn’t going to let a paint job or two stand between him and the opening of the state’s first public charter school for children with dyslexia.
“Finally, we're open!” the CEO and president of Provident Charter School told a group of more than 100 school officials, families, dyslexia experts and local leaders, who gathered in a stuffy hallway of the Troy Hill school for an open house and ribbon cutting Wednesday."
See original story here
Friday, September 9, 2016
Ending-corruption-and-waste-in-your-public-school
INTRODUCTION
In order for school boards and their employees to protect, maximize and monitor school resources with due diligence, it is essential that all school operations and practices be reviewed and analyzed independently and constantly. The most effective way to begin and maintain such a process is to form a community-based Forensic Auditing Committee (FAC). One of its primary tasks would be to ask critical questions of the school board. The reason for asking the questions is to determine quickly and easily whether board policies and school practices are protecting and maximizing school resources effectively, efficiently, and ethically and that they are free from the ravishes of potential or actual corruption.
Fortunately, a trend toward the establishment of groups akin to forensic auditing committees (FACs) seems to be gaining momentum. School officials in Mesa, Arizona, have proposed creating a public school audit committee that would “independently review the district’s books.” Unlike audit committees formed by neighboring school districts, “Mesa’s committee would be composed entirely of community volunteers with expertise in accounting and education.” (Arizona Republic August 6, 2006) Also, the Arizona Tucson Unified School District’s governing board is seeking people to join an audit committee to strengthen the school district’s internal financial controls. (Arizona Daily Star, August 3, 2007)
The reality is that some degree of corruption is likely to be found in most school districts. However, it takes critical questioning and diligent forensic review and analysis to determine whether corrupt acts have taken place, are taking place, or could be committed with relative ease. In this regard, it is vital to understand what is meant by the term “corruption”:
“breach of trust, bribery, crime, crookedness, deceit, deception, dishonesty, exploitation, evil, extortion, fraud, graft, malfeasance, nepotism, payoff, profiteering, tainted, unethical, untrustworthy and unscrupulousness”
Typically, boards will be defensive and deny that corruption is a malignant and institutionalized problem and will provide a reason that should never be accepted: school accounts are audited regularly so there is no reason to be concerned about or suspect any wrongdoing. Although it appears to be a very credible answer, it does not withstand verification because routine school audits are not designed to uncover the three categories of corruption: cheating and deceit, waste and mismanagement, or even fraud and stealing.
If the audit were conducted with generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS) — and therefore incorporated Standard #99 (Consideration of Fraud in Financial Statement Audits) — it still would not identify waste and mismanagement issues or cheating and deceitful practices.
http://www.yankeeinstitute.org/policy-briefs/ending-corruption-and-waste-in-your-public-school/
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
Monday, August 1, 2016
United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE)
United States Parents Involved in Education
End the Department of Education and all federal education mandates.
This is what we’re up against: millions of dollars in funding and an agenda to abolish individualism and turn America into a collective society by indoctrinating young minds through government schools. With rigorous standardized testing, home-visiting programs, and preparing children for the “global workforce,” The Council for a Strong America is driving forward John Dewey’s radical, utopian vision to change America to a collective society.
https://stopfeded.wordpress.com/about/
A reminder: The Federal Family Fixing Plan
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
DRAFT POLICY STATEMENT ON FAMILY ENGAGEMENT FROM THE EARLY YEARS TO THE EARLY GRADES"We refer to “family engagement” as the systematic inclusion of families as partners in children’s development, learning, and wellness."
• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires that states and school districts engage parents and families in the work of ensuring positive outcomes for all students. School districts are required to have written parent and family engagement policies with expectations and objectives for implementing meaningful parent and family involvement strategies. They are required to involve parents and family members in jointly developing district plans and to provide technical assistance to build school capacity to plan and implement effective parent and family involvement activities to improve student academic achievement and school performance. The requirement for implementing effective parent and family engagement activities to improve student outcomes can be found throughout ESEA including Title I, sections 1010 and 1116, Title III, Title VI, and 21st Century Community Learning Centers among others.
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ecd/draft_hhs_ed_family_engagement.pdf
From Utah:
Local School Board Member Asks Parents to Take Action on Federal ESSA
Wendy Hart, a star board member of my local district, Alpine School District, is so dedicated to transparency that she keeps a blog about her work.
"In June, I attended a training session on ESSA presented by the National School Boards Association (aptly titled: A New Federalism). The presenter, an attorney, recommended that we work with our legislators to remove the ability of parents to opt their kids out of state testing. The consequence, she said, would be to jeopardize our federal funding under ESSA. So, the one avenue parents have to protest and to protect their students is under attack by the ‘new’ supposedly kinder, gentler, less-federal-encroachment law. Additionally, I asked how they would be able to do this when some states, like Utah, for example, have opting out codified in state law, the state law predates ESSA, and under the 10th Amendment, the states would have jurisdiction in this area that the feds clearly do not. Her response, paraphrasing, “Since the monies in ESSA are ‘voluntary’, you will not be able to get someone to challenge it on 10th Amendment grounds.” In short, by taking the federal monies from ESSA, we are subverting state (and natural) law–voluntarily."
http://wendy4asd.blogspot.com/2016/07/feds-and-bonds-summer-happenings.html
https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/local-school-board-member-asks-parents-to-take-action-on-federal-essa/
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