Test Scores

Convening for the first time since summer break, the School Reform Commission received preliminary data yesterday that showed what Superintendent Arlene Ackerman called the "good and the bad. " Test scores, up for the seventh straight year, rose to 52 percent performing at grade level in math and 48 percent in reading, an increase of about 3 percentage points in each category from the previous year, according to district figures released yesterday....

ELMER SMITH is right: The Bush administration's test-driven education plan will leave many Philadelphia school children behind (column, March 5). But there is a more immediate threat to them: schools CEO Paul Vallas' scheme to base promotion on test scores. Every major organization of testing experts agrees that educational decisions should not be based on results from a single exam. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, the National Academy of Sciences and the test publishers agree.

Before the Colorado tragedies, with education reform emphasizing the importance of measuring student achievement by test scores, most national school news focused on academic performance. Everyone agrees that the primary responsibility of schools is to teach our children, but the public is also increasingly aware of how intricately children's academic and social needs are related. The heartbreaking events at Columbine High School make this tragically clear. Education reform aimed exclusively at improving schools by raising test scores, without strengthening the human connections in kids' lives, will fail.

The Haverford Township School District has decided to disregard this year's California Achievement Tests. Gerald M. Hogan, supervisor of curriculum for the district, cited "serious deficiencies in the programming," and "internal inconsistencies" in scoring the exam as reasons for the district's decision not to include the test results in student files. The decision to disregard the tests was announced by Superintendent Ewald Kalmbach at Tuesday's school board work session.

School officials released district-wide test results last week that showed mixed results across the curriculum. Superintendent Harold Kurtz pointed to an influx of new students with "serious learning gaps" as an explanation for the uneven results in reading, math and writing test scores. "We're fighting a tide of new youngsters with learning problems," said Kurtz, who said the numbers don't tell the whole educational story. "It's not fair. It's the reality, but it's just not fair.

With the dismal results of the latest national education report announced a few hours earlier, Paul Kelly took his concerns about the state of American education to the Centennial school board Tuesday night. Kelly, a Warminster resident, said in light of the poor national results and lack of improvement in local test scores - which measure math and reading ability - the board should seriously reconsider increasing teachers' salaries. "The 9 mill tax increase we had last year - it has been 18 mills now in two years - and the fact that in two years there has been no improvement in the TELLS (Test of Essential Literacy and Learning Skills)

Nearly 96 percent of the ninth graders at Northern Burlington Regional High School passed the reading portion of the New Jersey High School Proficiency Test this year, Superintendent Walter J. Rudder told the district school board last week. In the math portion, 78.4 percent of the 245 ninth graders passed the test given in April, Rudder told the Northern Burlington Regional school board at a meeting Monday night. In reading, 95.8 percent of the 239 ninth graders taking that portion passed.

Pennsylvania lawmakers should take care in considering a bill that would let school districts use students' test scores to measure teacher performance. The legislation would mandate a statewide change as early as next year. Standardized-test scores would weigh heavily in determining whether teachers keep their jobs, receive tenure, or get merit pay. Given the sorry state of education, with students dropping out and flunking at alarming rates, it makes sense to use sterner measures to evaluate teachers, reward the best educators, and show the door to those who continually fail to improve.

City schoolchildren's state test scores are up for the ninth straight year, according to preliminary data released by the Philadelphia School District Monday night. District-wide, 59 percent of students met state standards in math, up three points over last year. In reading, 52 percent hit the mark, up two points. Students improved their performance across the board, with the exception of eighth grade reading. Pupils in grades 3 to 8 and 11 took the test, called Pennsylvania System of School Assessment or PSSA, this spring.

Results of test scores in grades 1 through 8 in the Philadelphia public schools, announced last week, are heartening in many ways. They show improvement in reading and math for pupils in all of those grades, which is the most important thing. They also demonstrate a fundamental turnaround for a school system that seemed to be down and out a few years ago and is now gaining steadily in public confidence, deservedly so. Constance E. Clayton has received much of the credit, as she should.

Vindication has finally come to a former Camden principal who was dismissed in retribution after blowing the whistle on rigged test scores. But six years later, the school district that fired him is still mired in mediocrity. Joseph D. Carruth has not only reached an $860,000 settlement, but an arbitration judge has ordered the district to rehire him by July 1, 2013, even if the Camden school board has to dismiss someone else to create a vacancy. Carruth said he was fired in 2006 for refusing to alter test scores despite pressure from an assistant superintendent.

Before principal Christine Borelli-Connor arrived at James H. Webster Elementary School in Philadelphia's Kensington section in 2006, expectations for its students were not high. Borelli-Connor, 35, said that few of the school's fifth graders were being admitted to the city's magnet middle schools and that scores on standardized tests were low. The outlook for the school's 940 students has changed significantly since then. "We received, this week alone, 37 acceptance letters from magnet schools," she said.

TRENTON - State education officials say 14 more public schools across New Jersey have been cleared in an investigation of possible cheating on state tests. But further investigations have been ordered for nine other schools as part of the probe conducted by the Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance. Eleven other schools are already under state investigation. The reviews center on instances where wrong answers were changed to correct responses at unusually high rates in at least one grade for the NJ ASK exams.

Two-thirds of South Jersey's public high schools maintained or improved their performance on the state's most recent standardized math exam and nearly 71 percent did so on the language-arts test, according to data released Wednesday by the New Jersey Department of Education. Statewide, the passage rates on the High School Proficiency Assessments showed progress in narrowing the achievement gaps between economically disadvantaged students and their nondisadvantaged counterparts, and between white and Asian students and their black and Hispanic fellow pupils.

The Pennsylvania Inspector General's Office is assisting the state Department of Education with its probe of allegations of cheating on 2009 state exams. Agents arrived in Philadelphia this week to begin interviewing teachers at the 13 Philadelphia district schools and three charter schools that are part of the inquiry, according to educators and others with knowledge of the probe. The Inspector General's Office has set up a hotline that teachers may call if they have information about cheating at their schools: 855-448-2435.

The Pennsylvania Inspector General's Office is assisting the state Department of Education with its probe of allegations of cheating on 2009 state exams. Agents arrived in Philadelphia this week to begin interviewing teachers at the 13 Philadelphia district schools and three charter schools that are part of the inquiry, according to educators and others with knowledge of the probe. The Inspector General's Office has set up a hotline that teachers may call if they have information about cheating at their schools: 855-448-2435.

BY DAY, Christopher Paslay teaches The Crucible and Thoreau's Walden to juniors at Swenson Arts and Technology High School. By night, the 39-year-old teacher-turned-blogger maintains a website, Chalk and Talk, that gives public-school teachers a voice. For Paslay, it was the advent of the No Child Left Behind reform model - the idea of holding schools to standards judged by test scores - that triggered his advocacy on behalf of his fellow teachers. "The disparaging of public-school teachers all the time got me a little upset," explained Paslay, who's taught English at Swenson, in Northeast Philadelphia, for 15 years.

After the school board in Chester County's Coatesville Area School District revoked the charter of the Graystone Academy Charter School, two very different explanations emerged. School Board President J. Neil Campbell said after the board vote last week that Graystone, which opened in 2002 and has 416 students in grades K-8, "has failed to be a justifiable learning institution. " The board president cited a long list of alleged charter violations from a hearing officer's report.