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  On Wednesday, March 4, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, State Board of Education and the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) announced they have reached an agreement on high school graduation requirements and the end of course exams (Graduation Competency Assessments - GCAs) proposed by the state last year.

Under the agreement, GCAs will be replaced with a series of state-developed standard final exams called “Keystone Exams” that will be offered to school districts, along with a voluntary model curriculum and diagnostic tools to identify and help struggling students.  School districts could still use locally developed and administered tests to makes high school graduation determinations, provided that the tests have been independently validated to make certain they are academically rigorous.  Further, school districts that use an independently validated local assessment would not have to use the state-provided standard final exams.  The cost to validate local assessments would be shared equally between the state and the school district.  This had been a sticking point in the initial proposal of the State Board with school districts concerned that they alone bearing the entire cost to validate local assessments would make the local assessment option impractical.

Schools also could continue to use other options for assessing high school students for graduation, such as student performance on the PSSA state math and reading exams, Advanced Placement, or International Baccalaureate exams.  The State Board of Education will continue to gather public input over the next several months and will be ready to take formal action on the agreement once the moratorium on regulations pertaining to high school graduation that was enacted by the Legislature expires in June.

Ø  Using data from a national study by Cornell University, Pennsylvania’s investment in Early Childhood Education programs in 2007-2008 has pumped more than $1.8 billion into the state’s economy.  Based on the research, for every additional dollar spent through Child Care Works and Keystone STARS, $2.17 is circulated in Pennsylvania’s economy, and for every dollar spent through Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts and Head Start Supplemental Assistance, $2.10 is dispersed into the market.  Click here for a county-by-county breakdown of the economic impact of early childhood education from the PA Department of Education.

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