Pennsylvania releasing scores from new public school accountability system

The scores are set to be released on Friday.

Pennsylvania parents and taxpayers will soon be able to check the performance of any school in the state online.

On Sept. 30, the state Department of Education plans to release its new public school accountability system, known as Pennsylvania school performance profiles.

Anyone will then be able to log on to a website that will include report cards for every school building in the state. Each school will be scored on a 100-point scale through a complex formula that accounts for state test scores, graduation rates, student growth, closing achievement gaps and other factors.

Visitors to the site can then get into the nitty-gritty of the formula, seeing how each school performed in every academic category taken into consideration.

"It is a lot richer look at the academic health of a building instead of just a snapshot of a single test," said Carolyn Dumaresq, Pennsylvania's acting education secretary.

The system ties into Pennsylvania's new teacher evaluation system. The profile's academic scores replace the federal No Child Left Behind Act's adequate yearly progress designation, which was based on state math and reading test scores. Pennsylvania has been granted a waiver from No Child Left Behind requirements. 

The profiles will be released annually. The scores that will be released later this month take into account last year's Pennsylvania System of School Assessment testing results as well as the end-of-course Keystone exams.

Easton Area School District Superintendent John Reinhart said it seems the test-and-punish philosophy of the No Child Left Behind era is losing its appeal with legislators.

"No one person, school or business should ever be judged on the results of one test," Reinhart said.

The new evaluation system's philosophy, "the idea that there are a multitude of factors that should be considered when evaluating anything or anyone, is a positive step in the thinking of those who want greater accountability in schools," Reinhart said.

'All part of the privatization agenda'

While the Bethlehem Area School District is relieved to be moving away from the failing labels of No Child Left Behind, Superintendent Joseph Roy worries the focus on a numerical score is going to create a similar stigma. He fears the overall score is going to become a buzzword in arguments to shut down schools and that no one will look at the detail of the profiles.

"This is all part of the privatization agenda," Roy said.

He disagrees that the formula moves away from focusing on test scores, noting 90 percent is based on test scores.

"It's still about PSSA testing," Roy said. "This score is worse than meaningless because it is also misleading."

Bethlehem has not yet seen its scores, but Roy predicts the numerical scores will correlate with the percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch.

"Do we think that teachers in Hanover are that much better than Donegan?" he asked, comparing the elementary school in suburban Hanover Township, Northampton County, to the school in the much poorer neighborhood of South Bethlehem.

He questions what the formula is in fact measuring and the validity of the methodology behind it. The profiles are meant to be comprehensive but ignore huge aspects of what his district has deemed important parts of education, like the arts and athletics, Roy said.

What goes into the score

Department of Education spokesman Tim Eller said the school performance profiles are based on multiple measures of student achievement and meant to show how students are performing in the state's public schools.

The score measures "the academic health of a school and to point out where there are weakness so that resources can be redirected to those areas," Eller said.

Indicators of academic achievement, like PSSA and Keystone scores, and closing the achievement gap account for 50 percent of the score while the other 40 percent is based on academic growth. That is measured through the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System, which gauges whether students make a year's worth of growth, Dumaresq said. The other 10 percent looks at factors that contribute to student achievement, like graduation and attendance.

"It really helps to focus where improvement needs to occur," Dumaresq said.

Roy agrees those are all good things to study and he likes the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System but he objects to slapping a politically expedient number on the evaluation. His district is already using data to drive its instruction, interventions and supports, he said.

"It's still one test, one measure," Roy said.

Reinhart: Might take up too much time

Bethlehem parents know their own experiences with their children's school, so the number won't matter much to them, Roy predicts.

"I'm more worried about the part of the community that's not connected with the schools," Roy said.

Schools across the state are putting in countless hours preparing for the new teacher evaluation system and checking the data off which the profiles are based. Bethlehem Assistant Superintendent for Education Jack Silva said the department keeps changing things mid-stream and it's stressful and time consuming.