‘Great Public Schools’ topic of meeting
DUNBAR TWP. – Parental involvement was the number one suggestion that came out of The National Mobilization for Great Public Schools Wednesday night at Connellsville Junior High West. About 30 Connellsville Area School District administrators, teachers and parents joined the Connellsville Area Education Association in a campaign to get concerned citizens talking about public education.
CAEA President Jane Sandusky said, “Educating our children is a critical challenge for our community, our state, and country. Our children deserve the best education possible, but our schools face ever increasing challenges that are not being met.”
One of those challenges, according to school officials, is operating with less federal and state funds and another is the Pennsylvania State System Assessment (PSSA) tests given to students in grades 3, 5, 8 and 11.
William Wilson, director of federal programs, said the “No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)” signed into law by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, and took effect July 1, 2002, is not working.
The act, according to Wilson, does not take into account special education students who absolutely cannot meet the federal and state requirements.
“At least 20 percent of our students are in special education,” said Wilson “and that makes it impossible for Connellsville to get to 100 percent in reading and math by 2014. No matter how hard these kids try, they cannot perform well on the test. It’s frustrating because our staff on every level is doing a good job.”
Wilson said most of the school district’s schools met the levels last year, however, as the proficiency percentages continue to climb year after year, Connellsville is going to get left in the dust because the bar is being raised higher and higher and school districts across the state with high percentages of special education students cannot reach the proficiency percentages that each school must achieve in math, reading or language arts between 2002 to 2014.
According to Wilson, the state has established its baseline data using the PSSA from 2002. All students in all school buildings in Pennsylvania must make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward the proficient level as follows:
– 2002-2004, reading 45, math 35
– 2005-2007, reading 54, math, 45
– 2008-2010, reading 63, math, 56
– 2011, reading 72, math 67
– 2012, reading 81, math 78
– 2013, reading 91, math 89
– 2014, reading 100, math 100
Wilson said schools that fail to make AYP for two successive years are identified for school improvement. That school must develop a plan as to how they can improve their PSSA test scores and meet the appropriate percentage to be removed from program improvement.
Wilson said if a school building fails to make AYP for three consecutive years the district must offer school choice as it did in year two and provide supplemental services to enhance performance goals for the individual students.
“The list goes on and on,” said Wilson “and none of it’s good. If a school fails for six consecutive years to make AYP, the state will take control of the building and initiate changes to increase the percent of students in the proficient level of the PSSA.”
Wilson said at the present time the Connellsville Area School District has three buildings that have been identified for “school improvement.” Junior Highs East and West were identified for inadequate reading scores and the senior high school was identified for insufficient participation rate of special education students taking the PSSA.
Each building has developed a School Improvement Plan designed to meet the minimum state requirements for reading and participation rate. The school district has implemented afterschool tutoring programs in addition to providing remedial assistance.
However, that said, all of the school administrators and teachers agreed that parental involvement is one of the major keys to helping students learn.
Sandusky said, “We wanted to let the community know about the inequities that we see in the ‘No Child Left Behind’ law and we wanted to stress the fact that we have no public accountability and we want to see our legislators make the law more equitable and more fair for children and to also help fund it.”
Sandusky said parents could help by simply talking about the alphabet in the car with their preschoolers or working on sounds. Another way to help is to set up small study groups with parents helping children with their homework.
Sandusky said if a parent or grandparent doesn’t understand the work, they should ask the teacher, a neighbor or a friend.
She additionally suggested that parents get involved in the after school-tutoring program.
“We have gotten to a place where school just isn’t fun anymore for the kids,” said Sandusky.
“We are trying so hard to cram in everything that we have to cram in and the fun in education is getting left out.”
In the meantime, CAEA members said that they would continue to meet with legislators to make them more aware of the problems with the PSSA test and the inequities that cause school district scores to go down.
Wilson said, “You can’t give the same test to every student. We need to come up with a different standard for special education classes.”