School Choice

  HARRISBURG - The push for school choice cleared its first major legislative hurdle - but not its last - when the state Senate voted Wednesday to provide taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers for impoverished students in failing public schools. The upper chamber approved, 27 to 22, a measure that would extend vouchers to low-income families with children in the bottom 5 percent of poor-performing public schools.. The bill would help families with incomes of $29,000 or less transfer their children to private or parochial schools by offering them state-funded vouchers of anywhere from $5,765 to $13,905, depending on the district.

HARRISBURG - The state Senate could vote as soon as today on a bill designed to meet Gov. Corbett's desire to overhaul the worst-performing public schools by helping students afford tuition at private and parochial schools with taxpayer help, and making it easier to attend a different public school. A rewritten version of "school choice" legislation that had stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate in the spring easily passed the Senate Education Committee yesterday. Supporters say they aren't willing to wait for schools to improve to help kids trapped in failing or unsafe schools, and that competition will force those schools to improve.

HARRISBURG - The push for school choice cleared its first major legislative hurdle - but not its last - when the state Senate voted Wednesday to provide taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers for impoverished students in failing public schools. The upper chamber approved, 27 to 22, a measure that would extend vouchers to low-income families with children in the bottom 5 percent of poor-performing public schools. The bill would help families with incomes of $29,000 or less transfer their children to private or parochial schools by offering them state-funded vouchers of anywhere from $5,765 to $13,905, depending on the district.

Thanks to a bill recently passed by the New Jersey Legislature, Catholic Partnership Schools can convert our schools in Camden into public charter schools. But why would we? Negative news about Camden has become a staple. But Catholic Partnership Schools' model of sharing resources and a culture across the city's five remaining parochial elementary schools is a success story. At a time when Catholic schools across the country are closing, ours are growing and thriving.

IN AN urban Head Start classroom, a 3-year-old has just been dropped off by her father and sits on the lap of a volunteer from the "Granny Brigade. " As he leaves, she begins to wail, "Daddy! Dadeeeeee!" Her "granny" holds her gently until she calms down and is ready to join other young children in their morning activities. They go through this ritual for several days until the little girl gradually adjusts to the new experience known as preschool. All children depend on the adults in their lives to establish the basic trust that they will be safe.

It took one game for the new school-choice program to make an impact on Colonial Conference football. One game. What happens in a month? A season? A couple of years of "recruiting" - oops, I meant to say "attracting" - student-athletes to schools outside their home district? The summer buzz in the Colonial Conference was about Sterling, since the Silver Knights had "attracted" several student-athletes from other districts through its school-choice option, which is linked to its Junior Naval ROTC program.

It took one game for the new school-choice program to make an impact on Colonial Conference football. One game. What happens in a month? A season? A couple of years of "recruiting" - oops, I meant to say "attracting" - student athletes to schools outside their home district? The summer buzz in the Colonial Conference was about Sterling, since the Silver Knights had "attracted" several student athletes from other districts through its school-choice option, which is linked to its Junior Naval ROTC program.

ROBBINSVILLE, N.J. - Four athletes tested positive for steroids during the 2010-11 school year, NJSIAA officials announced Wednesday. It was the most positive tests in the five-year history of the testing program. The previous high was two, said NJSIAA executive director Steve Timko. "It only reinforces the need for testing and how important it is to maintain this program," Timko said. "One [positive test] is too many. " Timkos said that because of confidentiality rules, the NJSIAA could not say what sports or even what seasons were impacted by the positive tests.

'Choice' won't fix public schools Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner fails to acknowledge that many school-choice options are struggling with the same roadblocks to student success as faced by the traditional public schools ("School choice makes inroads," Aug. 28). Wholly absent from the arguments of proponents of increased choice is data concerning its effectiveness. Minnesota, pointed to as a successful school-choice state, also has the nation's largest black-white achievement gap in both its charter and public schools.

James H. Lytle is a practice professor of educational leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and a former superintendent of the Trenton schools who served for 28 years as an administrator in the School District of Philadelphia It would be fair to say that the School District of Philadelphia is always in the midst of reform, and that these reforms are usually associated with the current superintendent. Most recently, we had Arlene Ackerman's Imagine 2014.