PAESSP Political Notes
September 10, 2004
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives continues to be out of session until Monday, September 27, 2004. The Pennsylvania Senate has scheduled three non-voting sessions for September 20, 21, 22, with their first voting session also on September 27.
The seven members of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Panel have been appointed. This panel is charged with awarding licenses to various casino’s which will be the start of the process of eventually having monies available for property tax reduction which will then put back-end referendum Act 72 into motion. It is still expected that the 2006 budget cycle will be the first year school districts will have to go through this process.
Dr. J. Daniel Collins, PAESSP executive director, and Joseph Acri, PAESSP assistant executive director, were recently provided an opportunity to sit down with representatives of the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO), State Board of Education members and Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) staff. HumRRO was the organization hired to determine the validity of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). The discussion included concerns raised by principals about the administration of test. PAESSP wants to see school staff have more access to how the PSSA test works, additional information be provided to school districts in how to prepare students and staff for the test and increased recognition be given to development and use of local assessments. It was agreed that all parties would continue to share information and concerns with the hopes that PSSA could be improved in the years to come.
The National Conference of State Legislatures released their report on the salaries of state legislators with a low for Alabama of $10.00 daily to a high in California of $99,000 annually. The salary for a Pennsylvania legislator is $64,638.05 annually.
The State House Education Committee met this past year with representatives of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to discuss the recent incident where students passed the PRAXIS, but were incorrectly awarded a failing grade. Because of pending lawsuits, the ETS representative declined to go into details concerning this incident. Discussion did occur on whether the test should be the sole criteria for the awarding of certification. The representative said it should not as it only measures the knowledge an applicant has in a particular area. A state representative did express to PDE staff that the PRAXIS requirement needed to be reviewed because it is losing good teacher candidates.