Year in Review

Year in Review

This has been an interesting school year so far. As Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times and it was the worst of times." The highlights have been an increased collaboration with a group of people who really care about the students in our school. We have formed a professional learning community with members of both the technical and academic staff at our school. It's the first time in my ten-plus year career in which that type of sharing has occurred between the "techies" and the "smarties." Barriers have broken down in our group and kids are benefiting.

Together, we have created a really wonderful project that has our students creating ePortfolio wikis. The students seem pumped up about the components of the project and they're being challenged to use all of the technology gifts available to them because of where they go to school. They are extremely fortunate in regards to access.

Just received PA Governor Ed Rendell's weekly e-newsletter. The headline screamed, Research: Many High School Grads Need Remedial Classes. I haven't blogged since 2005 - blogging seemed like shouting into an empty room - no one was reading my blog, and I didn't have the funds to hire someone to read it. The Governor's newsletter prompted me to dust off this space, update my profile and give blogging another try.

According to the PA Secretary of Education, Gerald L. Zahorchak, roughly one in three high school graduates needed remediation in order to begin college-level english or math courses. According to Zahorchak, this costs Pennsylvania citizens 26 million dollars annually. The implication is that high schools need to be held accountable. This accountability will most likely arrive in the form of another high stakes assessment - a final graduation test. This is not the first time I've heard the suggestion that "college is the new high school" and I do not doubt the accuracy of the statistics mentioned.

What is missing from this news release is the fact that a large percentage of the students we enroll as new high school students are functioning at a third or fourth grade level in math and/or english performance. The idea that high schools are failing because they are incapable of making up eight years of education in four years is an absurd oversimplification of the problem. All of us need to be asking ourselves the following questions:

• In this era of billion dollar budget shortfalls, do we have the stomach for funding the end of social promotion as now practiced in many of our schools? Will legislators begin funding early childhood education in a way that evens the playing field for all of our children at the beginning of their school years? Will they fund smaller classrooms, extended school days/years for any student in need? If they're going to "talk the talk" they're going to have to start to "walk the walk."
  
  
• Are educators and administrators willing to shoulder some responsibility for the complacency that has allowed this practice to thrive at multiple levels for so many years? Will they make the tough choices necessary to end this unfair practice?
  
  
• Will parents accept holding back Susie or Johnny until they are reading or computating at grade level? Are they willing to forego civil lawsuits that support social promotion?

Perhaps the time has come for us to begin holding adults as accountable as we hold our children?