The school used benchmark tests and online math and reading programs to target students' areas of weakness, Hardy said. It made the PSSA test a competition, and students rose to the challenge, he added.
Hardy said he expected the trajectory to continue. "In two years, we're really going to tear this thing up," he said. "We really know how to do it."
By 2014, 100 percent of all students and schools are supposed to be performing at grade level under the provisions of No Child Left Behind.
Last week, the Obama administration, saying that 100 percent student proficiency by 2014 was an unmeetable goal, announced that states could apply for a waiver of that requirement and adopt different targets if they also agreed to adopt a new approach for turning around the bottom 15 percent of schools.
Tomalis, a defender of No Child Left Behind, said Thursday that he had not decided whether the state will apply for the waiver.
He said that many states, including Pennsylvania, set standards for schools making Adequate Yearly Progress that called for little improvement in the early years and very steep gains in the last few years before 2014.
The prospect of achieving those gains over the next three years, he said, is "unrealistic." But the state, he said, does not necessarily want to replace the goals of the No Child Left Behind law with a new set of mandates that are included in the Obama administration waivers, so it is still looking at all options.
To look up school test scores statewide, visit www.philly.com/
pssa11
See which schools had the biggest gains and losses. B6.
Contact staff writer Dan Hardy
at 215-854-2612, dhardy@phillynews.com, or @DanInq on Twitter.
