Quaker Valley Reacts to Gov. Corbett's Education Reform Agenda

Quaker Valley Superintendent Joseph Clapper said he and other school leaders have unanswered questions regarding the education reform agenda Gov. Tom Corbett outlined for Pennsylvania earlier this week. 

"We’re all waiting for the details of the plan," Clapper said.

Corbett, in a speech Tuesday, listed his top four priorities on school reform: taxpayer-paid scholarships for low-income students; expanding the Educational Improvement Tax Credits program to businesses that fund scholarships; improved charter school quality and accountability; and tying student performance to teacher evaluations.

Corbett said he believed investing in a better educational path for students in at-risk situations would ultimately benefit all Pennsylvanians by potentially reducing future costs in corrections and welfare.

Clapper said as a preliminary analysis, he doesn’t believe the governor’s proposal affects based on cross enrollment.

None of Quaker Valley’s students, for instance, would be eligible for tuition assistance, according to the proposal.

Under the governor’s plan, tuition assistance eligibility would be based partly on whether a student resides within one of the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools across the state. All of Quaker Valley’s schools made Annual Yearly Progress, which measures student proficiency based on state standardized tests.

But Clapper said many details are not yet known, such as whether higher-performing public or parochial schools would be required to take in voucher students.

"If a family approves of a district and says 'We'd like to bring the voucher here,' can you say no?"

He also wondered whether "opportunity scholarships” would vary in value based on the district or school, and whether schools would be responsible for providing transportation.

"The devil is in the details," Clapper said.

The Pennsylvania School Board Association issued a statement in response to the governor’s education plan, saying that it misses the mark by focusing on tuition vouchers and expansion of charter schools. PSBA also cautioned against the expansion of the current EITC program without additional accountability measures incorporated into the law. PSBA did, however, express support for the governor's proposal for improvements to the teacher evaluation system. 

Corbett has said he would work out details with the legislature.

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The four proposals:

Opportunity Scholarships

Opportunity scholarships will provide a choice in education and will rescue children from failing schools. It’s also an efficient use of taxpayer dollars by targeting funding toward the student, where it will have the greatest impact, rather than providing more money to institutions that have consistently produced poor academic results.

The governor’s plan includes:

• An Opportunity Scholarship Program, which would provide tuition assistance for eligible students to attend a public or non-public school of their choice.

• Eligibility for scholarships would be based on income and residence within the attendance zones of the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools across the state.

• By focusing on the worst-performing schools and children in the most at-risk situations, this proposal sends tax dollars to where they can have the greatest impact.

• The proposal ensures accountability by requiring opportunity scholarship recipients to take an assessment to measure academic achievement. The Department of Education will administer the program, including verifying student eligibility and processing of payments.

• Should a child leave their school district to attend another school, the state dollars will “follow” the child.

The Educational Improvement Tax Credit:

For more than a decade, the Educational Improvement Tax Credit, or EITC, has
proven to be a successful partnership with businesses, schools and students —
helping to give families a choice in their child’s education, a release from Corbett's office said.

The program provides tax credits to businesses that provide funding for
scholarships and other educational improvement organizations, as well as academic programs and other benefits to students in all schools, from all socio-economic backgrounds, to pursue educational goals and advanced learning opportunities.

Specifically, the plan calls for:

• An increase to the EITC to provide greater educational opportunities to eligible students from low- and middle-income families beyond the nearly 40,000 students served each year.

• The increased EITC will also provide additional funding to educational improvement organizations that can potentially provide benefits to all schools.

• Program reforms will be proposed along with the increased tax credit.

Charter Schools:

Many quality charter schools have also proven to be a successful educational
alternative for the children of Pennsylvania for more than a decade. They offer
greater flexibility than traditional public schools, which are often limited by
statutory and regulatory requirements.

Specifically, this legislation will:

• Establish a statewide authorization entity to approve, license and oversee charter schools.

• Make it easier to convert buildings to charter schools.

• Improve the current payment mechanism of charter schools.

• Increase accountability provisions on charter schools to require academic performance and it will require charter school officials to comply with the state’s ethics and financial responsibility laws.

Educator Evaluations:

The biggest flaws of the current teacher evaluation system are that it covers only
two extreme ends of the teacher performance by offering “satisfactory” and
“unsatisfactory’’ ratings — providing no useful feedback to allow educators to modify their practices to benefit students.

The most recent reports for the 2009/2010 school year evaluations indicate that
99.4 percent of teachers and 99.2 percent of principals across the state were rated as satisfactory.

It is difficult to understand how nearly 100 percent of teachers and administrators are rated as performing well, Corbett noted, yet the results of the 2011 PSSA show 26 percent of students are performing at or below the basic level in reading, and 23 percent are performing at or below the basic level in math.

Pennsylvania needs a comprehensive method to provide a fair, credible and
accurate measure of educators, Corbett said, rather than “a rubber stamp’’ that
allows teachers and administrators to remain in their positions with little true
evaluation of effectiveness.

Recognizing this problem, the state Department of Education has received private grant funds to start a voluntary pilot program to improve Pennsylvania’s teacher evaluation tools.

One hundred education entities have already signed up for the voluntary pilot
program, including 82 school districts, 10 Career and Technical Centers and eight charter schools.

Specifically, Corbett's proposed legislation will build off this pilot program to implement a new statewide method to evaluate teachers, including:

• A new, reliable rating system will be developed to focus on student performance along with traditional observation of classroom practices. Such a system should be the basis for decisions involving merit pay as well as tenure, retention or dismissal of staff.

• Separate rating systems will be developed for teachers, principals and education specialists that will include different measurements and observation tools to help develop a final evaluation for each of them.

• Once all factors are considered, employees will be evaluated as “distinguished,’’ “proficient,’’ “needs improvement,’’ or “failing.’’

• The new rating system will provide educators with targeted resources, support and feedback so they can improve their instruction and subsequently, student achievement.