With balloons, goodie bags and cool jazz music filling the CAPA high school lobby, the usually dry and formulaic release of Pittsburgh Public Schools’ district-wide Pennsylvania System of School Assessment results seemed more like a party—and it was.
Amid testimonials from school principals, teachers and successful students, a beaming Superintendent Mark Roosevelt announced that the district has made “substantial and significant improvement, at all levels across the board.”
Among the data presented July 24 were results showing more students in nearly all grades scoring in the “proficient” and “advanced” ranges, fewer students in the “below basic” range and visible reductions in the academic disparity between African-American and White students
BIG RESULTS—Westinghouse Principal Shemeca Crenshaw congratulates her students for a nearly 224 percent increase in math proficiency over the last three years.
“Today is the day, folks, when we have absolutely nothing but good news,” he said. “Not even Mr. Brentley could say anything negative about this day; well, he might, but it wouldn’t be easy.”
Using terms ranging from “wrong-sizing” to “resegregation,” Board member Mark Brentley Sr. has been a long-time critic of Roosevelt’s school reorganization and building closing moves, including last month’s vote to close Schenley High School and the vote to move Rogers CAPA’s middle school students into the Downtown high school building.
Brentley has consistently said Roosevelt’s movement of students, changes in school grade configurations and building closing disproportionally hurt Black students. While Roosevelt conceded that test results were “flat at best” in the first year following most of the changes, this year’s results are a vindication.
Arlington, for instance, one of the newly created Accelerated Learning Academies with a 58 percent African-American population, for instance showed a 135.5 percent improvement in third grade reading proficiency over last year.
Similarly, over a three-year period, 11th grade Westinghouse High School students, 98.5 percent Black, improved 135.3 percent in reading proficiency and an astounding 223.9 percent in math—all the while reducing the number of student scores below basic in both categories by 48.5 percent and 29.6 percent, respectively.
“This turns people’s expectations about what urban kids, poor kids and kid of color can do right on its head,” Roosevelt said. “And that’s just what we wanted to do.”
In summary, across the district in reading and math:
•More students scored proficient on 13 of 14 exams;
•More scored advanced on 12 of 14 exams;
•More students moved out of below basic on 11 of 14 exams;
•Students in ALAs achieved reading proficiency or above 2.5 times faster than the district average and math proficiency or above 1.4 times faster than the average while reducing below basic reading scores three times faster and math scores 1.8 times faster.
•Students narrowed the “achievement gap” on 11 of 14 exams.
Dilworth PreK-5 Principal Monica Lamar, whose students were among those showing the greatest improvement in advanced reading and advanced math, said success in the classroom has invigorated both teachers and students.
“When one student did poorly on a test, her peers went to her and started helping her,” she said. “There was no teachers involved—they just did it.”
Donte Clark and David Palmer, two Westinghouse seniors who scored in the advanced range in reading and math, credited their principal, Shemeca Crenshaw, for helping them get the after-school and Saturday class help they needed to make themselves “Promise ready.”
“The attitude of the students is changing, more positive—it’s cool to be smart,” Palmer said.
Roosevelt said detailed school-by-school results will be given to teachers Aug. 4 and made publicly available shortly thereafter. Despite the dramatic PSSA improvements, Roosevelt said he does not expect the district to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress goal set in accordance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
(Send comments to cmorrow@newpittsburghcourier.com.)