Sunday, January 27, 2013
Not one cyber charter school in the state and fewer than one-third of 'brick-and-mortar' charter schools made Adequate Yearly Progress last year.
Charter schools have been touted as a way for students to escape underperforming local public schools ever since Pennsylvania passed legislation in 1997 establishing them as a independent public schools. Cyber charter schools followed in 2002. One of the key selling points used by charter schools has been that their students outperform their public school counterparts. But according to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, historical data indicate that a consistently lower percentage of charter schools make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) than traditional public schools. Last fall, the state Department of Education implemented a new way of determining whether charter schools have met student achievement milestones for AYP under the …
Saturday, January 12, 2013
See where other area schools fall on the list.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education released a list of high schools' average SAT scores for 2012 and Upper St. Clair High School tops the list. Out of 343 Upper St. Clair High School students tested, the average verbal score was 568, the average math score was 583 and the average writing score was 576. Coming in right behind Upper St. Clair is North Allegheny High School. Out of the 572 students tested there, the average verbal score was 566, the average math score was 582 and the average writing score was 557. And coming in third is Mt. Lebanon High School. The average score for the 395 students tested was 557 for verbal, 570 for math and 568 for writing. The Pittsburgh Business Times compiled a list of the top SAT scores for high …
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
The state will allow the board to raise taxes by $325 per $200,000 of assessed value if they vote to do so in June.
Superintendent Patrick O'Toole told the Upper St. Clair School Board on Monday night that the Pennsylvania Department of Education approved the tax exemptions the district applied for with two minor exceptions. In the letter the district received on Friday, the department said that the maximum amount of tax money the district can receive with the exemptions is about $2.735 million. For a homeowner of a $200,000 house, the tax increase would be equivalent to about $325. The two slight dollar amounts the department did not approve for the district came in the pension and debt categories. The board voted for the district to apply for the special exemptions from the state to raise property taxes beyond the Act 1 limit without having to get the…
Friday, February 24, 2012
Despite the petition's request, the department of education's press secretary said the district will be granted the exemption if it meets the requirements of law.
An online petition from Upper St. Clair residents addressed to Pennsylvania's Secretary of Education Ronald Tomalis has been circulating online since Feb. 14. The petition asks Tomalis not to grant the tax exemptions the Upper St. Clair School District applied for in January. The Pennsylvania law called Act 1 allows the school board to raise taxes by a maximum of .41 mills for their 2012-13 budget. However, the district applied for an exemption that could allow for a maximum of a 1.647 mills increase. Upper St. Clair Patch contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Education to find out if they got the petition and received an email back from Timothy Eller, the department's press secretary. "When a school district applies for an Act 1 …
NE12Ukid
4:59 pm on Thursday, April 25, 2013
Ed M 2:05 pm on Thursday, April 25, 2013 I agree home schooled kids are usually smarter. But they are socially more awkward. .>>> EdM, are you talking about homeschooling or charters now? Curious as to where you got your information that homeschooled kids are "smarter" kids. And who determined that they were also socially awkward, and how that was determined? I agree that cyber charter schooled … more ›