Friday, August 22, 2008
A Pennsylvania School Report Card
The conservative Commonwealth Foundation assesses the PSSA and Pennsylvania student performance.
I see a lot of the Stop the School thinking in this report. That doesn't make it bad. It's nice to know where the mindset comes from.
It's also not meant to be another opportunity to cry wolf about the failures of the Morrisville school district. Feel free to address the tax inequities and failures of state testing where they belong: Harrisburg. Don't penalize Morrisville and its students and residents.
A Pennsylvania School Report Card: How the Commonwealth’s Public Schools Stack Up to the Rest of the Nation
Author: David V. Anderson
Executive Summary
Politicians and school officials frequently point to student performance on state tests as a primary measure of the quality of public education. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) “is a standards based criterion-referenced assessment used to measure a student’s attainment of the academic standards while also determining the degree to which school programs enable students to attain proficiency of the standards.”
Unfortunately, exams such as the PSSA fail to adequately inform parents, teachers, and the taxpaying public about the quality of their schools. Indeed, a comparison between Pennsylvania’s achievement test results with those reported by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that the PSSA significantly inflates the numbers of public school pupils who are deemed to be performing at or above grade level.
With few exceptions, schools are engaged in massive social promotion of children who are not academically proficient. Even the very best schools promote upwards of 10% of their children to levels for which they are not prepared. In the worst schools, more than 95% are improperly promoted, based on the NAEP standard of proficiency.
The PSSA reports, on average, 1.82 times the percentage of students “proficient” in reading and math as does the NAEP. With an 82% test inflation, Pennsylvania falls just below the median of the 50 states test standards. Pennsylvania’s reported proficiencies seem to foster a complacent attitude among stakeholders in Pennsylvania’s public schools. Were more accurate comparisons available, parents, school officials, politicians, and taxpayers might be more alarmed and seek stronger remedies. In cases where the proficiencies reported by the PSSA are in the 80% to 90% range, they are seen as a matter of pride, yet the equivalent NAEP scale proficiencies—a range of 50% to 60% proficient—are troubling.
This policy brief used a mapping procedure to convert PSSA test results into ones consistent with the NAEP. This provides stakeholders with more realistic performance results. They are, however, also more alarming.
I see a lot of the Stop the School thinking in this report. That doesn't make it bad. It's nice to know where the mindset comes from.
It's also not meant to be another opportunity to cry wolf about the failures of the Morrisville school district. Feel free to address the tax inequities and failures of state testing where they belong: Harrisburg. Don't penalize Morrisville and its students and residents.
A Pennsylvania School Report Card: How the Commonwealth’s Public Schools Stack Up to the Rest of the Nation
Author: David V. Anderson
Executive Summary
Politicians and school officials frequently point to student performance on state tests as a primary measure of the quality of public education. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) “is a standards based criterion-referenced assessment used to measure a student’s attainment of the academic standards while also determining the degree to which school programs enable students to attain proficiency of the standards.”
Unfortunately, exams such as the PSSA fail to adequately inform parents, teachers, and the taxpaying public about the quality of their schools. Indeed, a comparison between Pennsylvania’s achievement test results with those reported by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that the PSSA significantly inflates the numbers of public school pupils who are deemed to be performing at or above grade level.
With few exceptions, schools are engaged in massive social promotion of children who are not academically proficient. Even the very best schools promote upwards of 10% of their children to levels for which they are not prepared. In the worst schools, more than 95% are improperly promoted, based on the NAEP standard of proficiency.
The PSSA reports, on average, 1.82 times the percentage of students “proficient” in reading and math as does the NAEP. With an 82% test inflation, Pennsylvania falls just below the median of the 50 states test standards. Pennsylvania’s reported proficiencies seem to foster a complacent attitude among stakeholders in Pennsylvania’s public schools. Were more accurate comparisons available, parents, school officials, politicians, and taxpayers might be more alarmed and seek stronger remedies. In cases where the proficiencies reported by the PSSA are in the 80% to 90% range, they are seen as a matter of pride, yet the equivalent NAEP scale proficiencies—a range of 50% to 60% proficient—are troubling.
This policy brief used a mapping procedure to convert PSSA test results into ones consistent with the NAEP. This provides stakeholders with more realistic performance results. They are, however, also more alarming.
Borough Arts and Events Calendar
Next up in Morrisville's summer-long celebration:
Friday, August 22nd, and Saturday, August 23rd
The "Heritage Theater" presents "1776"
Raindate is August 24th
Williamson Park Stage Pavilion
Info call Joe or Cheryl Doyle @ 215-295-8181
No charge for this event
More info: visit www.actorsnetbucks.org
On deck:
Saturday, August 30th
Come tap your feet to the tunes of the "Tri-County Band"
Williamson Park Stage 6-8pm
Bring a blanket or chair
No charge for this event
Friday, August 22nd, and Saturday, August 23rd
The "Heritage Theater" presents "1776"
Raindate is August 24th
Williamson Park Stage Pavilion
Info call Joe or Cheryl Doyle @ 215-295-8181
No charge for this event
More info: visit www.actorsnetbucks.org
On deck:
Saturday, August 30th
Come tap your feet to the tunes of the "Tri-County Band"
Williamson Park Stage 6-8pm
Bring a blanket or chair
No charge for this event
Archdiocese seeks aid for special ed
From the Intelligencer.
Archdiocese seeks aid for special ed
By DOM COSENTINO, The Intelligencer
Funding for special education programs are a problem for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, an administrator of the archdiocese said Wednesday at a state House Republican committee hearing in Upper Moreland.
Ellen Wedermeyer, the archdiocese's assistant superintendent for special education, said the archdiocese's tuition rate only covers 20 percent of what it actually costs to educate a special needs child at any one of its five schools of special education and eight additional programs for students with learning disabilities.
Wedermeyer also said enrollment in the archdiocese's learning disability program at the elementary level has increased 20 percent in the last year, with several locations full and a wait list for the upcoming school year.
“If we are unable to locate a new funding stream to aid in paying our operating expenses,” she said, “the futures of the five schools of special education are in jeopardy.”
Wedermeyer and others addressed the House Republican Policy Committee at a hearing co-chaired by state Rep. Thomas P. Murt, an Eastern Montgomery County Republican, at St. David Parish, which is home to Our Lady of Confidence Day School, an archdiocesean school that serves students with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
The state has already established an Educational Improvement Tax Credit, which effectively allows businesses to pay part of their state business taxes through state-certified, nonprofit scholarship organizations such as the archdiocese's Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools.
BLOCS can benefit special education students, but there is no special tax credit program specifically set aside for those students, according to testimony offered by Andrew T. Lefebvre, the executive director of the school-choice coalition REACH.
Murt, an Archbishop Wood graduate, said it was too soon to tell how the testimony would be utilized as part of any legislation. The General Assembly is on recess until Sept. 15, and a pair of bills — one in the House and one in the Senate — that would address special education services for non-public schools have been pending since last summer.
“We could decide,” Murt said, “if we want to use (Wednesday's testimony) to support the legislation that's pending now, or if other changes need to be made.”
Archdiocese seeks aid for special ed
By DOM COSENTINO, The Intelligencer
Funding for special education programs are a problem for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, an administrator of the archdiocese said Wednesday at a state House Republican committee hearing in Upper Moreland.
Ellen Wedermeyer, the archdiocese's assistant superintendent for special education, said the archdiocese's tuition rate only covers 20 percent of what it actually costs to educate a special needs child at any one of its five schools of special education and eight additional programs for students with learning disabilities.
Wedermeyer also said enrollment in the archdiocese's learning disability program at the elementary level has increased 20 percent in the last year, with several locations full and a wait list for the upcoming school year.
“If we are unable to locate a new funding stream to aid in paying our operating expenses,” she said, “the futures of the five schools of special education are in jeopardy.”
Wedermeyer and others addressed the House Republican Policy Committee at a hearing co-chaired by state Rep. Thomas P. Murt, an Eastern Montgomery County Republican, at St. David Parish, which is home to Our Lady of Confidence Day School, an archdiocesean school that serves students with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
The state has already established an Educational Improvement Tax Credit, which effectively allows businesses to pay part of their state business taxes through state-certified, nonprofit scholarship organizations such as the archdiocese's Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools.
BLOCS can benefit special education students, but there is no special tax credit program specifically set aside for those students, according to testimony offered by Andrew T. Lefebvre, the executive director of the school-choice coalition REACH.
Murt, an Archbishop Wood graduate, said it was too soon to tell how the testimony would be utilized as part of any legislation. The General Assembly is on recess until Sept. 15, and a pair of bills — one in the House and one in the Senate — that would address special education services for non-public schools have been pending since last summer.
“We could decide,” Murt said, “if we want to use (Wednesday's testimony) to support the legislation that's pending now, or if other changes need to be made.”
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