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Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 45 Location: Schenley Farms Neighborhood
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 8:17 am Post subject: 11-08-07 City schools avoid Pa. sanctions |
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City schools avoid Pa. sanctions
Thursday, November 08, 2007
By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Although the Pittsburgh Public Schools missed federal achievement benchmarks for five years in a row, the state Department of Education remains pleased with the district's improvement efforts and won't impose its own plan of correction, a district administrator said last night.
Linda Lane, deputy superintendent for instruction, assessment and accountability, said the state could oust district officials or restructure the district because of its record of low scores on state math and reading tests.
But Dr. Lane told the school board Education Committee that the district is doing enough restructuring on its own to satisfy the state, reinforcing comments state Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak made in August.
Dr. Lane made her remarks while giving an overview of the District Improvement Plan, to be voted on at the board's special legislative meeting Wednesday. The board at that meeting also will begin the approval process for a series of renovation and construction projects related to Superintendent Mark Roosevelt's overhaul of high schools.
The district must submit the improvement plan because of its poor reading and math scores. The district is in Corrective Action II, the bottom rung of the performance ladder created by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The improvement plan, required annually for low-performing districts, outlines the steps officials are taking to improve academic performance. It must be filed with the state by Nov. 16.
Many of the district's improvement efforts -- including a new elementary reading program, new curriculum for the middle grades and high schools, and more rigorous principal evaluations -- have been well publicized.
The district says it has improved test scores in some areas the past two years but still has much work to do. The 2006-07 scores include a decrease in the percentage of fifth-graders scoring proficient or advanced in reading, stagnant figures for fifth-grade math, and a racial achievement gap in math and reading at the elementary, middle and secondary levels.
Some board members asked for additional data. Theresa Colaizzi, for example, asked administrators to compare the performance of lifelong district students with those who had been in other districts.
"That really tells me what we deliver educationally," she said.
Joe Smydo can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1548.
First published on November 8, 2007 at 12:00 am |
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