Pennsylvania Sec of Ed Altered Test Rules to Inflate Charter School Scores
More than half of charter schools in the state fail by the very yardstick corporate "reformers" demand be used to judge real public schools, so the state Secretary of Education tweaks the reporting rules to make it look less bad.
This is the kind of rigging of the game you get when government services are contracted out to for profit businesses that can afford to take some of their profits to pay politicians to put their thumb on the scale.
This would be an embarrassment simply to the state of Pennsylvania if this wasn't the bipartisan federal policy that OUR PRESIDENT reaffirmed his commitment to as recently as the first debate.
When are enough of these stories going to add up to shame at least Democratic politicians into admitting this is a corrupt, costly mistake?
Our current K-12 education policy is like finding a malnourished, neglected kid, and instead of nursing him back to health, smothering him with a pillow so you can sell his organs.
The chief legal counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association said "the change might give the Legislature the false impression that charter schools outperform traditional public schools as they consider bills supported by Corbett to expand the number of charter schools and change how they are authorized in Pennsylvania."
PSBA pointed out that the new formula overstates the performance of charters. Because of the formula, "...44 of the 77 charter schools that PDE has recently classified as having made AYP for 2011-12 in fact fell short of the targets for academic performance that other public schools had to meet, some even declining in proficiency percentages rather than making gains.”
This is the intersection of politics and education, where the data are adjusted for political ends.
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