Corbett+will+kick+off+effort+to+'improve'+education

=By Marc Levy= =//Published by the Associated Press//= =//10/10/11//= = = = = =HARRISBURG, Pa.—Gov. Tom Corbett is expected Tuesday to put meat on the bones of a top priority—essentially, his vision for how to fix the ailments of public education—as his allies in the Legislature hope he will step more visibly into the battle to win over public opinion in Pennsylvania.= =Corbett hasn't yet said exactly what he'll announce when he travels to a school in York. But lawmakers expect four main points:= =— an expansion of the $75 million educational improvement tax credit program;= =— a taxpayer-paid voucher program to help more children attend private schools;= =— an overhaul of Pennsylvania's charter school law; and= =— a requirement that teacher evaluations be based partly on student performance.= ="Those are the heavy hitters," said House Education Committee Chairman Paul Clymer, R-Bucks.= =While the Republican governor has spoken often on the subject, even sympathetic lawmakers complain that he has not disclosed enough detail about what he wants, and that he has not become engaged in fighting for those initiatives, which may prove a tough sell in some quarters.= =The details of the proposals may divide Corbett's fellow Republicans, who control both chambers of the Legislature, and resistance is also possible from school boards, teachers' unions and Democrats.= =So October may be the beginning of that fight for Corbett, after a spring spent battling for a budget that resolved a multibillion-dollar deficit by making deep spending cuts, primarily in state aid to public schools, without increasing state taxes.= =The cuts in public school funding came as teachers point to the results of this year's state's standardized tests as a sign that Pennsylvania's public school students are showing remarkable performance gains against benchmarks required under federal law.= ="Restoring these unprecedented funding cuts should be Job 1 for all of us," said David Broderic, a spokesman for the state's largest teachers' union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association.= =However, Tim Eller, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said the test results were "very concerning" when viewed through a different lens. Although the union says more than 90 percent of school districts were judged to have demonstrated adequate yearly progress, Eller said fewer than 40 percent of individual schools demonstrated such progress by test scores alone.= =Corbett's long-term goal is a "school choice" system in which taxpayer money flows not to a public school to educate a child who lives within its geographical boundary but to the student, who then chooses where he or she wants to attend school, whether public or private.= ="We need to develop a system of portable education funding; something a student can take with him or her to the school that best fits their needs," Corbett said in his March 8 budget speech.= =Providing money for vouchers to attend private schools and an overhaul of the state's charter school law could be a big, first step for Corbett toward that end. A bill sponsored by Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin, would create new pathways for charter schools to open while also improving their public accountability, proponents say.= =However, the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, which advocates for poor and disadvantaged students, says the bill would fail to fix a myriad of problems with charters schools, which served about 90,000 students last year.= ="Charter schools can play a valuable but limited role in helping to strengthen public schools in communities facing complex educational challenges," the center said in testimony submitted to the House Education Committee this summer. "But taxpayer dollars for education should be invested primarily in public schools that are open to all children and fully accountable to the public through elected school boards."= =It's not clear how ambitious Corbett will be when he endorses a private-school voucher plan.= =Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis told the House Education Committee in August that the administration supports extending vouchers to low-income students in the lowest 5 percent of schools based on combined math and reading scores. He also told the committee that the Corbett administration supports expanding vouchers later on to students who attend schools where fewer than half of the students are performing at grade level in combined reading and math scores.= =Money also will be a question; the bigger a voucher program, the more it will cost taxpayers.= =Clymer said getting a voucher bill through the Legislature will be tricky. Some lawmakers will only support a program that targets the poorest students in the lowest-performing districts, while others will only support a program that extends vouchers to middle-class families in better-performing districts, he said.= ="There's passion on both sides," Clymer said, "and I don't know how this will play out."= =————= = = = = =News= =home=