New online tool offers data on public schools
A new online tool was launched Wednesday to give Pennsylvania taxpayers better access to how public schools are spending money, including the amounts the districts are paying for salaries.
It can be found at the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s School Performance Profile website, state Rep. Jim Christiana announced, saying it contains portions of his SchoolWATCH proposal.
“Our public schools are collectively spending more than $27.6 billion of taxpayer money each year,” Christiana, R-Beaver, stated in a Wednesday news release.
“This administrative move will allow the citizens to see how their tax dollars are being deployed in their schools. I applaud the department for seeing the significance of providing fiscal transparency at this level.”
The profile website provides a numeric score for each public school by using multiple measures of student achievement, such as student performance on the state assessments in math, reading, science and writing; graduation rate; attendance rate; and promotion rate.
The website can be found at http://paschoolperformance.org.