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NJ Spotlight--Exploring Christie’s Budget Plan — From the Education Angle
Acting education commissioner Harrington slated to appear today before Assembly committee to speak up for governor’s public education allocations
With the stakes more consequential than one might think, New Jersey’s acting education commissioner Kimberley Harrington today goes before the Legislature for the first time today to defend Gov. Chris Christie’s budget plan for public education in 2017-2018.
The hearing before the Assembly budget committee is the first of two that Harrington will testify on about the fiscal 2018 spending plan. On May 2, she will go before the Senate budget committee.
John Mooney | April 24, 2017
NJ Spotlight--Can Guadagno’s ‘Circuit Breaker’ Short-Circuit Rising Property Taxes?
The lieutenant governor’s plan faces two immediate hurdles: inherent complexity and voter skepticism
Kim Guadagno, the state’s lieutenant governor and a leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, has come up with a novel “circuit-breaker” approach to providing New Jersey residents with relief from the state’s ever-rising property tax bills. But her proposal has also met with skepticism and claims of irresponsibility, since she hasn’t identified a sure source of revenue to pay for it.
John Reitmeyer | April 24, 2017
Star Ledger--Compare what your district spends per-pupil versus any other district
TRENTON -- The average cost of educating a public school student in New Jersey eclipsed $20,000 a year for the first time in 2015-16, according to new state data.
The state's school districts and charter schools spent an average of $20,385 per student last school year, a 3.8 percent increase from 2014-15, according to total per-pupil spending data released by the state Department of Education.
Included in the total cost are pension payments the state makes on behalf of school districts and tuition and fees districts paid to send students to other schools, including expensive programs for special education students.
Adam Clark and Carla Astudillo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 21, 2017 at 7:30 AM, updated April 21, 2017 at 10:14 AM
Washington Post--What the latest assaults on science education look like
Participants in the March for Science gather at the Washington Monument before marching to the Capitol on Saturday. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
Each year, anti-science education legislation is introduced in state legislatures around the country — and, in a few cases, has been passed. So what is an anti-science education bill — and how many have been introduced in 2017?
There are essentially two different kinds of anti-science legislation, according to the nonprofit National Center for Science Education.
One involves efforts to repeal the adoption of state science standards or challenge science textbooks. There are also bills that attempt to allow science (and other) teachers to present unscientific criticism of scientific principles as legitimate — usually aimed at affecting classroom discussion on evolution and climate change.
Since 2014, more than 60 such bills have been filed in state legislatures all over the country; two have been enacted, in Louisiana in 2008 and in Tennessee in 2012.
Valerie Strauss April 22
Education Week--Key Takeaways: State Accountability Plans Under ESSA
Twelve states and the District of Columbia have submitted plans for implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act. The law gives states significant new leeway to set student achievement goals and calls for looking beyond test scores in gauging school performance
http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/key-takeaways-state-essa-plans.html
Education Week--ESSA Aims to Shine Brighter Light on Per-Pupil Spending
Cost figures can prove elusive
States and school districts are girding for a little-known but tricky piece of the Every Student Succeeds Act: the requirement that states report per-pupil spending for all their schools, a level of detail unknown even to many district superintendents.
Without specific federal guidance so far, state finance officials must untangle the myriad—and sometimes obscure—costs behind school operations to come up with a single figure for each of the nation's 99,000 public schools.
Do transportation and school lunch count as a district's administrative costs, for example, or are they school costs? How do you split the expense of a bus that stops at several schools?
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/04/19/essa-aims-to-shine-brighter-light-on.html
Daarel Burnette II|April 18, 2017
