Legislative Update: GCAs

The other issue to generate a lot of heat at the Harrisburg conference was the agreement between PSBA and PDE to replace the GCAs with the Keystone exams (no acronym).

To recap: there had been enormous opposition to Governor Rendell's proposal to require ten Graduate Competency Assessments as a condition for a high school diploma in Pennsylvania. Educators opposed it, school boards opposed it (including a resolution by the State College school board) and legislators opposed it by overwhelming majorities in both houses.

None of this discouraged the governor, who doggedly continued to allocate funds to move his initiative forward, in spite of current budget constraints.

Then about six months ago, PDE commissioned a study by Penn State to evaluate the extent to which the graduation requirements of individual school districts aligned with state standards.

The result - which shouldn't have surprised anyone, really - was, shall we say, uneven.  Some districts aligned well, some not-so-well, some districts didn't respond at all.

PSBA saw the handwriting on the wall and decided that it was time to make a deal.

In my opinion, the deal is actually pretty good. The key differences (improvements) in the Keystone exam proposal:

•     The Keystone exams will be voluntary: districts are free to use some, all or none of them.
•     Districts may continue to use multiple types of assessments for graduation purposes.
•     PDE is required to provide technical help to districts who want to develop their own assessments.
•     The criteria for determining the validity of local assessments will be made by a committee comprised equally of state and local school officials.

I can't find much here to argue with.

Nevertheless, some school board members appeared to be upset that they hadn't been consulted. (Myself, I was happy that someone took the initiative.) Others - I would call them the purists - seemed to argue against ever using a standardized test for any reason.

I'm not sure whether those arguments are valid, but they seem to ignore the political reality that, at the very least, we needed to give the governor a way to save face.  Second, we have other issues to deal with. (It would be nice to talk about something else for a change.) Finally, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Some people just don't know how to declare victory and go home.