Another liberal Democrat, union supported, storyline obliterated by facts. It seems PA test scores plunged in math and reading. How could this happen? Obama has been in charge for four years. His Federal government solutions to making our kids smart should be working by now. Our fine batch of union teachers and their 4% per year salary increases and gold plated health and pension plans must surely be working their magic on our children and making them smarter. Right? Well, it seems a monkey wrench was thrown into the ever increasing test scores in PA. Once schools were prevented from cheating and faking test scores, the scores plummeted – Especially in the City of Philadelphia. More than 20% of Phila public schools were CAUGHT cheating. I’m sure there were others that were not caught.
The teachers union slimeballs blame the drop in scores on the draconian education “CUTS”. Here are a few inconvenient facts for the union bloodsuckers:
PA spends $26 billion per year on education, more than $14,000 per student – up 40% since 2000. Does this chart show draconian cuts? Private and charter schools without union teachers spend less than $12,000 per student and get far higher test scores.
Here are some more inconvenient facts:
Since 1995, when Pennsylvania doubled taxpayer spending on K-12 education from $13 billion to more than $26 billion, SAT scores have been flat and state results on the U.S. Department of Education’s Nation’s Report Card haven’t improved much since 2002. Today, Pennsylvania school districts spend more than $14,000 per student—with some as high as $25,000—and studies show absolutely no connection between district spending and student achievement. Moreover, the achievement gap in some of our most failing and violent public schools continues to widen, like the Harrisburg School District where taxpayers invested more than $18,000 per pupil but 9 out of 10 students couldn’t reach proficiency in math. Because these facts get in the way, the public school industry resorts to rickety rhetoric, citing “draconian funding cuts” over the past two years. But the truth is these cuts occurred with the end of the federal stimulus, which was always intended to be temporary aid. Excluding federal funds, Gov. Corbett’s proposed budget actually represents a two percent increase in spending on K-12 education since FY 2007-08, the year before the stimulus.
After decades of Federal government mandates, programs, and initiatives, along with doubling and tripling spending on education, our children are dumber than ever. But if we just throw another $2 billion at teachers unions, all will be well. The City of Philadelphia school district, in addition to being bankrupted by their union contracts, has achieved the fantastic result of having 13% of its 250 schools meeting the minimum standards for reading and math. They have certainly lived up to the promise of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND – they have dumbed down every child in Philadelphia. And you wonder why this country is doomed.
Pennsylvania’s school test scores drop for the first time since 2002
The percentage of Pennsylvania students meeting state math and reading standards on the PSSAs – the annual academic accountability test – declined this year for the first time since the tests began in 2002.
Education Secretary Ron Tomalis on Friday attributed the drop to tight security procedures enforced during the spring testing, especially in 110 schools across the state still under investigation for possible cheating from 2009 to 2011.
This is the first year, Tomalis said, that the public can be confident that, overall, test scores are not tainted by adult interference. “We have hit the reset button on student performance,” and the 2012 scores provide a new baseline, he said.
Well over 100 educators will eventually face state disciplinary charges for cheating that could lead to the revocation of their professional certificates, Tomalis said. But that could take years, and the results of state disciplinary board hearings in Harrisburg would be disclosed only if educators were disciplined.
In Philadelphia, 53 district-run schools and three charter schools are still under investigation for allegations of cheating in past years.
Of those 53, all but two experienced declines in both subjects from the previous year. The Philadelphia Military Academy at Elverson had a 71 percent decline in math scores from 2011 to 2012, the biggest drop of any city school. The two other schools had a decline in either math or reading.
Statewide, the 110 schools that had been under investigation this year for cheating averaged a double-digit drop in math and reading scores. With those schools taken out of the mix, math and reading scores for students statewide would have declined about 0.5 percent. With the investigated schools included, they were down about 1.5 percent.
Last year, 77.1 percent of the state’s students scored at or above grade level on the math test; this year, 75.7 percent met the mark. In reading, student scores declined from 73.5 percent at grade level to 71.9 percent. Tomalis called those percentages “unacceptable for Pennsylvania,” adding that everyone needs “to redouble our efforts.”
In Philadelphia this year, 50 percent of students districtwide performed at grade level in math, 45 percent in reading. That is down from 59 percent in math and 52 percent in reading last year.
“These results are clearly disappointing, and they simply remind us of the work we have ahead in developing a strong system of schools in Philadelphia and in supporting our students’ learning,” School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said.
The news was not all bad. The High School of the Future was one of the most improved schools in the district. It rose 27.2 percentage points in reading and 22.8 percentage points in math.
“I took a double take,” said longtime district principal Rosalind Chivis, who has been at the helm of the 425-student school since 2008. “I knew we would improve, but it blew me away when I saw the data. I was so very proud of the learners. They worked really, really hard, and a big part of it is motivating them to do well, to take the test seriously and do well.”
Along with the decline in test scores, the number of schools statewide meeting achievement benchmarks declined sharply from last year, in large part because Pennsylvania’s No Child Left Behind school accountability standards went up a sizable amount from 2011.
The state thresholds went up from 67 percent of students required to make the mark in 2011 to 78 percent this year. In reading, the benchmark went from 72 percent to 81 percent.
This year, 51 percent of schools statewide met state academic benchmarks by having the required percentage of students scoring at grade level or above. That was down from 75 percent in 2011.
In Philadelphia, only 33 – 13 percent – of the district’s 250 schools met state standards, down from 41 percent in 2011.
Among city charter schools, 54 percent met the benchmarks, down from 63 percent in 2011. In Philadelphia’s suburbs, 65 percent of schools made the mark, down from 81 percent.
Statewide, in addition to Philadelphia, five districts and three charter schools remain under investigation for cheating from 2009 to 2011, Tomalis said. They are the Harrisburg, Hazleton Area, Pittsburgh, Reading, and Scranton districts and the Imhotep Institute, Philadelphia Electrical and Technical, and Walter D. Palmer Leadership Learning Partnership charter schools.
An additional five districts and one charter school that were under investigation this year will continue to be monitored and will have strict new test security measures. Though no one was identified as having cheated, there was no satisfactory explanation of the irregularities at those schools, Tomalis said.
Some educators and education advocates blamed the drop in student performance on reduced funding for schools.
“It defies logic that they could expect student performance to improve after cutting nearly $1 billion” in funding in 2010-11, said Wythe Keever, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union.
Keever said cheating “is wrong. . . . Those individuals should be held accountable.” But he said Tomalis was using cheating revelations to “shift attention away from the real issue: adequately funding public education.”
Tomalis said the state’s Technical Advisory Committee found heightened test security the only factor in the drop. “I don’t buy the excuse the numbers went down because of budget cuts,” he said.
Union leaders were quick to criticize state officials for tying cheating to the statewide drop in test scores.
“Any cheating on tests is deplorable, but to use an incomplete investigation involving a handful of schools and educators statewide to discredit our public schools and the educators who have dedicated their careers to helping all children reach their full potential is nothing short of a political cheap shot,” Ted Kirsch, president of the American Federation of Teachers Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, agreed. Cheating may have occurred, he said, but its impact is negligible.
“When resources are pulled from our schools, scores drop,” Jordan said.
By 2014, according to the federal No Child Left Behind law under which the state tests are mandated, 100 percent of students should be scoring proficient or advanced. Virtually all educators see that as unrealistic.
Last year, the Obama administration started allowing states to scrap the 2014 deadline if they would agree to adopt new rules that focus on the bottom 15 percent of schools, and make other changes.
Thirty-two states, including New Jersey, and the District of Columbia have been granted the waivers.
Tomalis on Friday called it likely that Congress will pass a new version of No Child Left Behind in the next year or two and that the state did not want to keep changing accountability plans. He instead asked for federal permission to freeze test benchmarks for schools at 2012 levels, but was turned down.
Pennsylvania’s academic thresholds are set to increase to 89 percent in math and 91 percent in reading next year.
As far as test scores go, the inner city’s will only get worse since there are so many behavior problems. The schools will not discipline the problem kids due to race. I live is a suburb and I know for a fact that they would not put up with the behavior issues that the inner cities put up with.
The city schools are run by leftists so the school system and the unions are in bed. The problems won’t change until you throw out the troubled students and the schools liberal agenda.
A brawl at a plant operated by Foxconn, which assembles products for Apple and other tech firms, involved some 2,000 workers and left around 40 people injured, its parent company Hon Hai said on Monda.
See smart phones make people iStupad.
I know a lady that is a teacher in a Dallas, Tx school. The parents, for the most part, think its the job of the teachers to raise the kids…daycare and guess what, the parents arent boomers.
@Kill Bill
yeah they were only raised by boomers…the further our humanity separates ourselves from boomers the better
Honestly, the cuts the union is griping about are true. They are using the math they are teaching the children. Before you know it 2 + 2 will equal 4 but unitl then it equals what the union and obama wants it to equal. Haaa! Truth what a novel concept. Something from the evil past of the white Mans rule. Obama speaks truth based on his Current need. Situational ethics, see I am always right.
One of the perfect examples of advanced societal decay.
Large swaths of the US population, having long since become wards of the state in one way or another, have rejected anything resembling productive behavior, including responsible parenting, which is also seen as a responsibility of the state.
As I’ve said before on here the biggest factor in a kids education is parental involvement.
The local private school is 5K per year per student the average SAT is 1200. The local public school spends 9K per student,,the average SAT is 890 .
The difference is the parents at the private school are spending “Their Money”…so they have an interest to make sure their kids are performing at school. In public schools the parental involvement is minimal . I have friends who teach and they say they’ll set up time for Parent/Teacher conferences…maybe 10% of the parents show up. The ones that show up are the ones who’s kids are doing the best in class .
Tthe majority of teachers are not boomers either. Boomers are old and stupid and no longer have control. How can they? Boomers are fat lazy and dumb so the younger smarter, thiner better prepared generations have taken control now. Or, are they so dumb thay can’t even take control from the boomers? People want to know.
Jim
There is no doubt that New Jersey ranks in the Top 3 as a Shithole State to live in.
But I think PA is making a strong case as #1. Would you agree?
Stuck
I don’t know that the whole state is a disaster, but Phila, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh are about as bad as you can get when it comes to cities.
Philadelphia Schools Cheating On State Test Likely Far Worse Than Previously Revealed, Evidence Shows
| By Benjamin Herold Posted: 08/17/2012 10:14 am EDT Updated: 08/17/2012 4:38 pm EDT
This piece comes to us courtesy of a partnership between WHYY/NewsWorks and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.
The scope of the Philadelphia School District’s problem with suspicious erasures on state standardized tests is far more widespread than officials have publicly revealed.
But so far state and district investigators have launched deeper probes into suspected cheating at only a third of the 53 schools where strong evidence was found.
Confidential documents and information obtained by WHYY/Newsworks and the Public School Notebook show that many of the 53 schools were flagged across multiple grades, subjects, and years for extremely high rates of “wrong-to-right” erasures on test answer forms. The documents include results from erasure analyses conducted in 2010 and 2011, which state officials have refused to make public.
In response to those findings, the district put in place tough new test security measures last spring. The result was huge drops in scores at nearly all of the 53 schools, according to preliminary 2012 PSSA results also obtained by NewsWorks and The Notebook.
AN EXAMPLE FROM NORTHWEST PHILLY
At F.S. Edmonds Elementary in Northwest Philadelphia, for example, student PSSA response sheets were flagged for suspicious erasures 23 of a possible 24 times between 2009 and 2011. In 2012, the school’s scores plummeted by nearly 50 percentage points in both reading and math.
But Edmonds so far appears to have avoided direct scrutiny by state and local investigators.
The school is one of 22 determined by the Pennsylvania Department of Education to be of “lower priority” and thus not subjected to on-the-ground questioning about cheating. Documents show that many of those schools showed major signs of possible cheating.
Even with forensic or statistical evidence, cheating can only be proven through eyewitness testimony or admissions of wrongdoing.
A spokesperson from the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) declined to respond to requests for confirmation and explanation, saying the department would not comment on an ongoing investigation. In a statement, district officials offered little more.
But documents and conversations with sources paint a picture of a widespread problem that officials are attempting to address with a limited number of boots on the ground.
“No one is really moving at an aggressive pace on this,” said one source with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.
“The truth of it is no one wants [Philadelphia] to be the next Atlanta.”
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Philadelphia Public Schools Promoted Principals From Schools Under Suspicion Of Cheating
| By Benjamin Herold Posted: 09/19/2012 10:45 am EDT Updated: 09/19/2012 10:47 am EDT
Strawberry Mansion High School is one of many Philadelphia schools that have shown suspicious patterns of “wrong-to-right” erasures on standardized state tests. .22131056Get Education This piece comes to us courtesy of a partnership between WHYY/NewsWorks and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.
In 2009, Strawberry Mansion High School appeared to be something of a miracle.
A neighborhood high school in a rough part of North Philadelphia, Mansion saw more than two-thirds of its students score “proficient” or above on that year’s state standardized tests.
Today, though, compelling evidence indicates that Mansion’s unusually high test results were driven by adult cheating.
Documents obtained by NewsWorks and the Notebook show Mansion students raised alarms about cheating as far back as 2005. Suspicious patterns of “wrong-to-right” erasures on test sheets, a tipoff for adult cheating, have also been spotted in both reading and math for the 2009 and 2010 testing cycles.
Now, Lois Powell-Mondesire, the principal who presided over the school’s testing gains, is no longer there, and Mansion’s test scores are back in the tank. Barely 10 percent of students scored proficient or above on last spring’s exams.
But Powell-Mondesire wasn’t disciplined.
She was promoted.
In 2010, Powell-Mondesire was tapped for a new central office position advising other principals on how to turn around struggling schools. While Mansion struggles to get back on its feet, Powell-Mondesire will make more than $145,000, just shy of the top possible salary for a Philadelphia principal.
A statewide probe involving 53 regular city schools, four area charters, and a number of other districts across Pennsylvania is still ongoing. It is possible for cheating at a school to occur without a principal’s knowledge or involvement. No proof of cheating by specific administrators has been made public, and no Philadelphia school administrator has been charged with wrongdoing.
But in a number of cases, telltale signs of adult cheating at specific schools correlate to the tenures of individual principals. Some of those principals were rewarded by the district after overseeing eyebrow-raising test score gains.
That practice has continued, even after district officials became aware of evidence of suspicious erasures. For example, Barbara McCreery, who oversaw dubious test score increases at her former school, Communications Technology High, was installed just this summer as the new principal at Bok Technical High.
“I think this is willful blindness,” said Michael Josephson, a leading national expert on ethics and education and the president of the non-profit Josephson Institute of Ethics.
“There’s a deliberate looking the other way,” he said.
FAIRNESS OR SLOW REACTION?
Powell-Mondesire did not respond to requests for comment.
But principals’ union President Robert McGrogan was adamant that it is unfair to associate individual administrators with cheating until an investigation being led by the Pennsylvania Department of Education is complete.
“I believe that the media is trying people, and I think that is inappropriate,” said McGrogan, the president of Teamsters Local 502, Commonwealth Association of School Administrators (CASA).
A military school with weapons training would be more useful for most kids.Im not worried about our educational system,there arent any jobs is the problem.
Funny out west here the schools have tightened up and the teachers tell me its the feds raising the bar is why.The math levels my kids need to learn is much higher and at lower grade levels than was required of me.The school has three hours of after school tutoring available each school day,four day school week.
I watched a fun program showing how briggs n stratton moved to China for more profit.Lots of folks left in my boat of trying to figure out a new job at the fifty year mark.
Its so bad i considered working for the TSA,then i read an reporters article where she did it for a few months,im not into that kind of abuse.
I think school kids should be encouraged to cheat. They should be following their role models in Washington and local politicians, and Wall Street, and banks. It’s the only way they’re going to be able to keep up with Asian kids anyway.
Teachers deserve their $150,000 a year salaries, especially in Chicago, and their $7 million pensions. They should be able to retire at 50. They should belong to country clubs, have yachts, drive Mercedes, and only work a few months a year.
They are special, because they’re in a union. They deserve to be paid 5 times what the average person makes. It’s okay that only 30% of their students are passing tests. They should be allowed to cheat, if it makes the teachers look better. Cheating and unions are synonymous. It’s a great system, and it works so well, and taxpayers are so happy. They’re graduating brilliant kids, able to tackle the problems in this country. All the kids really need to learn is a) how to get pregnant and b) directions to the welfare office. They don’t need anything else really.
@Admin Re: SAT scores — they rescaled SAT scores in 1996, so that they would be significantly higher. Which means, pathetically, that SAT scores did NOT remain flat between 1995 – Present, they actually dropped in terms of the # of correct and incorrect answers. The rescaling after 1995 came out to an average +70 or so points on the SAT. So, someone in 1995 who got say, 1300ish, would have gotten about a 1400 in 1996 with the same # of correct answers. You used to have to get 100% correct answers (1995 and before) to get a perfect score, when they rescaled you could miss a couple and still get a “perfect”. Later they added another section, and rescaled again. No matter how they try rescaling, the scores keep dropping. And if you use the old scale, they’ve gone off a cliff.
What would we do without the Dept of Education (created in 1980) and its $75 billion annual budget?
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As the graph shows, kids really are getting dumber. Thanks to their icrap, they won’t have to even think anymore.
Teachers deserve another raise. And more vacations, and double their pensions. They’re doing one helluva job!
Jim: That sign on the Strawberry Mansion School was referring to the number of pregnancies.