Full PSSA Results released?

Breaking news: PSSA results will be released erlier than ever, in stark contrast (and probably in part due) to the fact that the Pennsylvania budget is well overdue.

From yesterday's press release by the Pennsylvania Department of Education:

“Pennsylvania’s investments in increasing student achievement are working, and for the sake of our economic future we cannot afford to lose momentum now,” Secretary of Education Gerald L. Zahorchak said. “The last stage of any race is the hardest, and we need to accelerate our progress in helping the toughest-to-reach students succeed in the classroom.”

Governor Rendell’s proposed budget would build on student success by continuing to fund schools using a six-year formula enacted by the General Assembly last year. The formula, crafted as a result of the legislature’s “Costing-Out Report,” is intended to ensure all schools have the tools needed to bring all students to proficiency while minimizing the burden on local property taxpayers.

Interestingly, the results have not been posted anywhere yet. When the results are posted I will confirm this link and offer assessment of the DVSD performance. Of particular interest will be the grade 11 Reading and Math scores and some of the subgroup scores. We will see if the disparity between the DV schools in some elementary school grades has eased or increased from last year.

Educational news from outside the district

Two news items from Pennsylvania:

• The Hatboro-Horsham School District in Pennsylvania is in the midst of teacher contract negotiations. The district is in suburban Philadelphia. A Philadelphia Courier-Times article highlights some of the concerns on both sides. The district is attempting to change to a more merit pay type of compensation. The union would like to keep things the way they are with 5+% effective increases each year. Take some time to looks at the proposals and see how far apart the sides are. There is a Q&A discussion of the plans, probably posted by the district. It will be interesting to see what the final contract looks like.
• In a Pittsburgh Post gazette article: "Legislature may consider 1% sales tax plan" the latest plan to allow counties to impose a 1% sales tax is discussed. The plan has not evolved much in the past few months, and there does not seem to be provisions for helping ease the school tax portion of property taxes:

  "if a county does increase its sales tax by 1 percent, half the new revenue would go into county coffers, and the county would have to use some of it to reduce property taxes.

  Another 40 percent of the additional sales tax revenue would be split among the municipalities in the county; and the rest would go for "collaborative services," such as joint police operations, equipment purchasing and regional booking centers."

It would be interesting to see how counties would adopt and deal with a 1% property tax.

High School Graduation Exams

There is an ongoing controversy about High School graduation requirements in Pennsylvania. The Governor's budget includes over $200 million to develop state graduation exams in English, math, science and social studies. School districts and local boards (including DVSD) has protested that expenditure and the possibility of yet more mandated tests.

An article in today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette indicates that rather than requiring districts to adopt the new graduation exams the following options may be available to demonstrate competency for High School Graduation:

• Students could pass at least six of the 10 exams, one each from science and social studies and two each from English and math.

• Schools could count scores from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests for comparable subjects.

• Schools could require students to pass state-validated local assessments.

• Students could complete a locally designed academic project if the student fails a Keystone or state-validated local assessment.

Some of the tests could replace some 11th grade PSSAs if approved by the federal government, but there would be more standardized tests than present in any case.

I have never heard the answer to this question: Why is it necessary to have an separate graduation requirement test? Why not improve the PSSAs, and use them along with the existing graduation requiremnts?

I believe the answer would cause state officials to acknowledge that the PSSAs are not a very good measurement tool.

What are your thoughts? Who and how should one determine if a student has demonstrated competency for High School graduation? Who should set the requirements and what should they be?

Breaking PA budget news...

The new budget proposal by the Pennsylvania Republicans announced today looks much like the previous Senate Bill 850 for education.

A comparison of:

• the original budget proposed by the Governor (which is what DVSD planned on when passing the "0%" tax increase for 2009-2010),
  
• the revised Governor's proposal,
  
• the original Senate Bill 850 (which would result in a $2 million shortfall at DVSD, what I estimate to be the equivalent of an approximately 5.2% in increased property taxes) and
  
• the new Republican proposal (HRAC1)
  

...shows that the two sides are far apart on educational funding.

There is actually LESS money for education than in Senate Bill 850 in some areas.

Education starts on page 5 of the comparison.

I think it is far past time for the DVSD board to plan cuts to take us to a true 0% tax increase.

We will see what happens this Tuesday 7/14/2009 at the board budget meeting and this Thursday 7/16/2009 the regular DVSD Board meeting.We need to deal with this situation and stop pretending we will get all the funding in the DVSD budget. We will certainly be short. The only responsible path is it develop a list of cuts and enact them when the final PA budget passes.

What do you think the DVSD school directors should do? Wait? Take action? Keep hoping and do nothing?

Goldsack Resigns (again); Civil Lawsuit Filed; Auditors Sue County

Goldsack Speaks About Resignation (Pike County Courier)

Former Director of Elections Yolanda Goldsack spoke out at the Commissioners Meeting this week with a prepared statement that indicated she no longer wants another County position after resigning from her old one. She blasted the Pike County Democratic Committee for what she described was an orchestrated strategy to create distrust in the elections system, and criticized the County Commissioners for not defending her after she was told she could not respond to the perceived attacks. She vowed to set the record straight in the coming weeks. 

Civil rights suit filed against Pike County (PoconoNews.net)

Dawn Metzger, former Director of Pike County Children and Youth services, filed a federal civil lawsuit against the County this week. She claims that the County violated her rights to free speech because she was immediately suspended and then fired after she reported Commissioner Harry Forbes to a state agency for inappropriately interfering in a particular case. County Solicitor Tom Farely expressed confidence the case would not get far. 

Pike Commissioners Subpoenaed by Auditors and Win Lawsuit (Pike County Press)

The Pike County Auditors have used a court order to obtain documents pertaining to 2008 grants they claim were not provided by the County. Auditor Tom Foran says the County had two weeks to comply and did not. 

In a separate legal case, the auditors won a lawsuit against the County after they were denied an extension to complete this year's audit (as they have for the past several years). 

Commissioner Rich Caridi said the cost of extending the deadline to last year's date in October would cost the County over $100,000. Pike County President Judge Joseph Kameen ruled in favor of the auditors saying, "The commissioners have not cited to a single factual example of auditor impropriety, delay, misfeasance or indolence in support of their claim."

Local Government Should Embrace Technology

A national online town hall meeting on healthcare reform and the expansion of USAspending.gov last week are examples, at the federal level, of great advances that are being made to increase government transparency and civic participation through the use of the Internet and new technology. The potential benefit of using these tools and practices on the local level is even greater.

Recently, the Eastern Pike Regional Police Department launched an impressive new Web site that will eventually host interactive crime mapping, a great resource to increase public safety. The Delaware Valley School Board debuted a feature called “BoardDocs” in May, which allows the public to download meeting agendas and other documents, some of which have previously been inaccessible. These are promising strides in the right direction in using technology for the public good.

Still, there is much room for improvement. Case in point: forget Twitter or Facebook, try finding the email address of your local elected official online, no less an annual budget, public meeting schedule or meeting minutes. These resources should be the rule, not the exception. But why stop there? An emergency text-message alert system (Wayne) and digital campaign finance reports (Allegheny) are two examples of other advances Pennsylvania counties have recently made.

According to the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, Pike is in the minority of counties without a dedicated Information Technology director. Perhaps if such a position is created, the director can implement a long-term strategy, working with the municipalities, to ensure we make progress in this area.

Though resources will have to be allocated for this purpose, I think the real question is one of priority: whether greater transparency and participation should become goals at every level of our democracy. Once the infrastructure is established, maintenance costs would be relatively low. In the end, expenses incurred will be a worthwhile investment in a better-informed public and a more accountable government.

One of the take-home lessons from the annual Personal Democracy Forum I attended last week was this: we will stifle innovation if we expect or demand an infallible government; we must allow our public officials to try new things and take action, even if the result is not perfect. But progress must be made because, as time goes on, the status quo becomes increasingly unacceptable in this Information Age.

Check out these other County Web sites:

Westmoreland County
Butler County

Some Positive PSSA results

There were some early PSSA results that list DVSD as a top performer in some areas.

I believe in celebrating good news, and there certainly seems to be some in the preliminary PSSA results. This does not mean that we can sit back and relax. These numbers look good, but the entire PSSA results have not been released yet. The math scores for 11th grade may still be a problem and there still may be areas of concern when you look at subgroups, even in the areas that we did comparatively well.

When the entire PSSA results are released you should be able to find them on PA's site: http://paayp.emetric.net/District/Overview/c52/120522003?schoolID=

On another blog, I responded to a commenter: I am not sure if you are referring to my comments, Anonymous, but be assured that I spoke up when the budget was adopted and voiced my concern for the $2 million in unfunded spending that is still not funded. A director asked what cuts I would make and I indicated that deferring some of the new curriculum and cutting back on some technology purchases as was outlined in "plan B" would be a place to start. The board passed the $70 million budget without the votes of the two sitting directors that I am running with. We advocated reducing the budget and presenting the actual tax increase that will hit property owners if PA does not pass the entire education budget, which few believe will happen at this point.

There are still many unknowns. It is unknown if PA will fund DVSD as anticipated in the budget that was passed by the board. There is likely to be a shortfall, and the board will have to reduce expenditures. The board may to consider a tax increase for THIS year. Next year will likely be tougher, no matter what the outcome is this year.

While this is gloomy, I am not sure what else I, as an individual citizen, could have done to encourage cutting expenditures and present the potential tax increase. The equivalent tax increase if we do not get the $2 million that has not been passed by PA is 6% according to the district superintendent. I believe that she was excluding the use of some reserve money in her calculation as I calculated a 5.2% effective increase with the use of the reserve money. So much for the "0%" touted by some of the candidates this year! Even without the $2 million, PA has increased their contribution to DVSD by 11% over last year! We need to do a better job at scrutinizing expenditures.

There were two candidates that voted "No" twice, Sue Schor and Pam Lutfy. They advocated for reducing expenditures and making an effort to get to a true 0% tax increase. If I were on the board I would have voted "No" also, and joined them.

This can all pretty confusing for those that do not have the time to attend the board meetings. If you have specific concerns, feel free to contact me directly at wegreenlaw@gmail.com or post a specific question here or as a comment here.

The candidates on the slate that I am on do care about the citizens of the district and their views.

I believe that the current board, and its leadership:
-did not try hard enough to make cuts
-has been getting lots more money from the state in the past few years
-has deluding itself in thinking it is managing the budget well.

I think we can do better. I believe that we need to pay more attention to each line in the budget, we need to look at variances during the year, and we need to budget on a five year plan. We are certain to have challenges ahead when we will be required to adequately fund the pension plan.

When there is good news we should celebrate it. Don't misread me, some good news does not mean all is well, but it does mean that we should understand what we did right, and improve on that.

Evaluating our Schools

Recently Secretary of Education for the United States, Arne Duncan, addressed the largest teacher's union in the country, the NEA. He addressed many of the challenges and opportunities for educational improvement in America. Merit pay and student testing were two of his topics. I found his discussion of data interesting:

"Now let's talk about data. I understand that word can make people nervous but I see data first and foremost as a barometer. It tells us what is happening. Used properly, it can help teachers better understand the needs of their students. Too often, teachers don't have good data to inform instruction and help raise student achievement.

Data can also help identify and support teachers who are struggling. And it can help evaluate them. The problem is that some states prohibit linking student achievement and teacher effectiveness."

He goes on to discuss standardized testing as data, specifically, data that may be used to evaluate teachers:

"I understand that tests are far from perfect and that it is unfair to reduce the complex, nuanced work of teaching to a simple multiple choice exam. Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation or tenure decisions. That would never make sense. But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible."

Secretary Duncan then suggests a path forward:

"It's time we all admit that just as our testing system is deeply flawed—so is our teacher evaluation system—and the losers are not just the children. When great teachers are unrecognized and unrewarded—when struggling teachers are unsupported—and when failing teachers are unaddressed—the teaching profession is damaged.

We need to work together to fix this and I will meet you more than halfway. I will demand the same of every principal, administrator, school board member, elected official and parent. I ask only the same of you that I ask of myself and others."

He echos my philosophy well. Sitting back and saying that our standardized tests are not good enough is easy. Advocating for or against merit pay is easy. Getting the differing sides and stakeholders to come together and solve these problems is tough.

We need to open that dialog and realize that data is a four letter word, but it is one that we need to use, and not cover our ears when we hear it. Sure, data can be used inappropriately, and we tend to focus on what we can measure, but the alternative to using data is willful ignorance. We need to embrace methods to understand where we excel and where we are not effective. With good data we should be able to tailor curriculum, lesson plans, and teaching methods to improve the efficacy of our teaching. We should not be afraid to discover what works well, and what does not work.

We need to ensure that we use the data that we have is used its fullest while advocating for tests that provide more useful information and shaping the improved measurement systems of the future.

We need to remind ourselves that we all have a common goal of efficiently educating our students and providing them with the core competencies that they will use to be effective lifelong learners. We all benefit when our students are well educated.

Have a Happy Fourth!

Last week's storm hit many of the local businesses hard. If you have visitors this weekend, or just have not strolled around the town of Milford lately, consider walking around downtown. Have a mini vacation just by spending a few hours and eating a meal locally. From Noon to 5pm on the Fourth there are activities planned in downtown Milford. We need to support our local businesses!

Please encourage celebrating responsibly. I vividly remember the hand of the vice principal of my high school which was missing a few fingers from an accident involving fireworks. Be careful while driving as the roads will have heavy traffic and distracted drivers.

I'd encourage you and your family to take some time and read the Declaration of Independence again, or watch it being read on video:
A reading of the Declaration by members of the 1998 Supreme Court.
A phrase by phrase discussion of the Declaration

It is also a convenient time to re-read the the Constitution.

Have a great Fourth of July celebration!