The U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program is requesting public comment on proposed plans for its new Exemplary Charter School Collaboration Awards competition. This competition (84.282P) is designed to create incentives for charter schools to collaborate with non-chartered public schools and non-chartered local educational agencies (LEAS) to share and transfer best educational and operational [...] More »
April 18, 2012 1. The Philadelphia School Partnership gave an overview of the GreatPhillySchools, the product line that will provide the community access to school information and performance data across all systems. The initiative will launch in fall 2012, in partnership with several other nonprofit stakeholders. 2. With the Gates’ proposal deadline approaching, the committee [...] More »
The following letter from the Executive Director of the PCPCS was published in the Pittsburgh Tribune on April 24, 2012: I find the initiatives and perceptions of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association and the district representatives quoted in Eleanor Chute’s article (“School Boards Group Offers Aid to Charters,” April 16) ironic, misinformed and unfortunate for [...] More »
PDE will be conducting an informational webinar from 10:30 a.m. until noon on April 26, 2012. The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) invites all school districts, charter schools, intermediate units, and career and technical centers to join us in Phase III of the continued development and implementation of a new teacher evaluation system in the 2012-13 [...] More »
The U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP) has just announced two new Non-State Educational Agency (Non-SEA) grant competitions for 2012. Applications for both competitions are due June 6, 2012. The CSP’s Non-SEA Planning, Program Design, and Implementation competition (84.282B) provides grants directly to public charter schools so they can plan, design, and complete [...] More »
Update from the Compact Committee - Meeting #9 Mar 30, 2012 The Committee addressed questions and concerns of charter schools relative to current charter modification and expansion policies. These included a lack of clarity about the timing and criteria for decisions on charter modification and inconsistencies in the criteria used to make modification decisions in recent [...] More »
The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools is very pleased to report that on April 3, 2012 the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania upheld the March 4, 2011 decision of the Secretary of Education which previously awarded the Walter D. Palmer Leadership Learning Partner Charters School $1,253,225.82 in its enrollment cap dispute with the School District [...] More »
Meeting #8—March 14, 2012 1. The School District gave an update on the School Performance Index (SPI) appeals process, in response to concerns raised by charter schools regarding the latest SPI scores: a. Schools for which there are no parent or student surveys will receive an “N/A” for those items, a change that will alter the [...] More »