School profile website receives many visitors
In the four days since state education officials released data on the academic performance of every school in Pennsylvania, the website that contains the information has received in excess of 60,000 visitors, the acting secretary of education announced Tuesday.
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning, Carolyn Dumaresq said that the plurality of the visitors to paschoolperformance.org – 40 percent – have identified themselves as parents, followed by teachers, administrators, and taxpayers, with other categories breaking down into single digits.
“It’s fairly diverse, but the majority has come from parents, which is interesting,” Dumaresq said.
The site contains data on all the individual schools in the state, along with cyber and charter schools, along with academic ratings for each school on a 100-point scale, with 70 being the threshold for a passing grade. The debut of the site was delayed by four days last week when some officials said that test results had been omitted in the scoring and, at least initially, 626 buildings did not receive a score, including several schools in Washington School District. However officials at 53 schools have since agreed to have their profiles posted.
In Washington County, to cite a few examples, Peters Township High School received a score of 93.3, while Trinity High School managed an 80.5. In Greene County, many schools in the county’s five school districts did not yet have their numbers posted.
The performance ratings are based on a mix of factors, including standardized tests, graduation rates, enrollment and dropout rates and academic progress. They are replacing the AYP rankings, or adequate yearly progress, which relied on scores on math and reading tests under the No Child Left Behind law.
Dumaresq also announced Tuesday that the Pennsylvania Department of Education would release a list of the state’s 92 lowest-performing schools that will be getting help under its waiver from No Child Left Behind. “Academic recovery liaisons” will be hired and financial assistance will be available.
She said eight to 10 academic recovery liaisons will be hired and will work with groups of principals, and that financial assistance would be set aside in Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget proposal next spring.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.