Cheating Pa. Teachers Could Lose Certification

More than 100 educators in Pennsylvania’s public schools could lose their certificates in connection with cheating scandals where they changed student answers on state exams.

By Melissa Daniels | PA Independent HARRISBURG — More than 100 Pennsylvania educators could be on the hook for losing their state certifications as fallout from a statewide cheating scandal. Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis said recently the state will soon take disciplinary actions against “easily over 100” teachers and administrators who are suspected of changing answers on statewide tests. The announcement comes after a yearlong investigation of dozens of school districts statewide. “If there’s inappropriate behavior happening in Pennsylvania classrooms, we’re going to make sure that doesn’t continue and those people will not be in the classroom,” Tomalis told reporters Friday. Once state officials took notice and started acting, they…

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Nazareth Area School District Meets PSSA Benchmarks

Nazareth Area School District exceeds 2011-12 state averages for Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) in reading, writing and math; science scores, however, lag behind.

Students in the Nazareth Area School District topped their counterparts across the state in terms of being "proficient" or "advanced" in reading, math and writing, according to school test results released Friday. The Pennsylvania Department of Education released the results of the 2011-12 Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA), administered in the spring, and for the six Nazareth schools the news was encouraging. In math, of 2,416 students tested, 88.4 percent were considered "advanced" or "proficient" compared with state averages showing 75.6 percent "proficient" or "advanced," according to an analysis of the test scores. For reading, while 72 percent of students in the state were found to be "proficient" or "advanced," 81.9 …

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Nazareth Schools Meet AYP Goals for Third Straight Year

Each of the six schools that make up the Nazareth Area School District achieve Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, for 2012.

All six schools in the Nazareth Area School District made their achievement goals based on standardized state tests in 2012 -- for the third straight year. Assistant Superintendent Michael Roth outlined the results, school by school, in a brief but enthusiastic presentation to the district school board on Monday. Full details will be available in October, when the district receives its so-called “report card” from the state Department of Education, Roth said. Each district school achieved Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, goals for this year, based on average test scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Test, better known as PSSA. The standards, which grow harder to achieve each year, are outlined in the federal No Child …

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Schools Advocate Takes Aim at 'Nostesia'

Public schools supporter says educators need to do a better job of making their case to an aging taxpaying public.

It was early in Jamie Vollmer’s transformation from education critic to public schools advocate that a superintendent invited him to spend a day in her district. She had Vollmer, then a business executive, do bus duty and work as an aide to a third-grade teacher in the morning. After a 20-minute lunch break, the superintendent took off the kid gloves. “She put me in an eighth-grade classroom on a warm afternoon,” Vollmer recalls. “I’ve since referred to that as the nuclear option.” Trying to engage, control and teach a class of adolescents gave him a new respect for what teachers face every day.  “Many of these kids are victims of a culture that has assaulted their physiology [from medications they take], fractured their attention span and…

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Life in the Slow Lane

Does Social Studies Matter?

Allentown School District may combine social studies with English to make more time for math. Is that a good idea?

  On a recent 13-minute drive home from baseball practice, my 15-year-old explained to me how World War I started. Mind you, I knew the bit about Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand being assassinated by a Bosnian Serb but I couldn’t have told you why other countries started joining in like it was a brawl at an NHL game.  For most of us, information has a use-it-or-lose-it quality. If we’re not called on in daily life to remember who was president during the Spanish-American War, it might slip our minds.  What stays are concepts. How America’s founders enshrined freedom of speech, religion and the press in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. That America came to England’s aid to …

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Jonathan Gerard

6:29 pm on Saturday, May 12, 2012

For those who still doubt the value of social studies, here is an article addressing just this question, to be published in the May 24 issue of The New Republic, by a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. I know that some readers believe that their opinions are as informed and have as much merit as those of an ivy league professor, but for those willing to talk less and listen more (and…   more ›