Issues
Elementary & Secondary Education Characteristics
Did you know?
- More than 21 percent of Pennsylvania students failed to graduate with their class in 2010. Today, there are more than 100,000 high school dropouts ages 16-24 in Pennsylvania. This group costs the Commonwealth money though lost revenue, increased crime and social spending.
- If the more than 100,000 16 - 24 year-old high school dropouts were to re-engage and earn their high school credential, plus attend some postsecondary education or earn an associates degree, instead of costing more than $70 million each year in public programs, they would contribute nearly $1 billion each year.
Charter Schools
- In Pennsylvania, there are 140 public charter schools—including 11 “cyber” charter schools—educating more than 90,000 students.
- 1 in 4 children in Philadelphia attend a charter school.
- If all Charter schools were combined to form a school district, it would be the second largest district in the state (second only to Philadelphia).
- At present, there are an estimated 30,000 students on charter school waiting lists. Today more than 1.4 million children are attending a charter school.
Teacher/Principal Evaluation
Stanford’s study on teacher quality shows that while a highly effective teacher can create 1.5 years of academic growth for a student in a single year; ineffective teachers create on average only .5 years of growth; students with highly effective teachers learn three times as much as those with ineffective teachers.
Pennsylvania requires districts use a state-provided uniform rating system to evaluate teachers. The current system only uses the categories of “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” and does not include student achievement as a performance measure.
Statewide, the information shows that 99.4 percent of all rated teachers and 99.2 percent of all rated principals received a “satisfactory” rating. Only 0.6 percent and 0.7 percent of rated teachers and principals respectively were categorized as “unsatisfactory” in these evaluations.
