This site was started by a group of concerned parents and School Board members in the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District following an InterSchool Council (ISC) meeting on January 9, 2008.
We strongly believe that the proposed Graduation Competency Assessment Tests will be detrimental to our school district and harmful to our students. We object to this loss of local control of our schools. Conestoga, our local high school, already has high graduation standards. In fact, Conestoga ranks among the 100 best public high schools in the country.
Although 85% or more of our students have scored proficient or advanced each year on the 11th grade reading and math PSSA tests, 15% of our students currently demonstrate proficiency to graduate through alternative assessments rather than through high stakes testing. These students, who were not proficient on the 11th grade PSSA, have gone on to attend competitive colleges such as Dickinson, Drexel, Muhlenberg, Temple, Pittsburgh, Penn State, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rutgers, Southern California and Virginia Tech.
While these students were unable to prove their proficiency in a high stakes testing environment, we believe that their admission to and success at these high quality colleges is a testament to the validity of our current local graduation competency assessments. Under the proposed GCA regulations, these students would have been denied the opportunity to receive a high school diploma and to attend college.
Under the proposed GCA regulations, 40 to 70 proficient T/E students could be denied a diploma every year. Pennsylvania’s professional education associations, the Pennsylvania State Educator’s Association (PSEA), Pennsylvania School Board Association (PSBA), and the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators (PASA) have all expressed concerns about the inequity of denying diplomas to students. We share their concerns and request that the State Board of Education enable students to demonstrate proficiency in alternative ways, which take into account the needs of diverse learners.
Tredyffrin-Easttown InterSchool Council
Holly Amsterdam, InterSchool Council Chairman
Debbie Bookstaber, TE School Board
Jim Bruce, TE School Board
Karen Cruickshank, TE School Board
Liane Davis, TE School Board
Betsy Fadem, TE School Board
Kevin Mahoney, TE School Board
Peter Motel, TE School Board
Deborah Rollins, TE School Board
Pat Wood, TE School Board
To Contact the Site Administrator, email: debbie.bookstaber@gmail.com
