After listening to the committee reports at last night’s TE School Board meeting I asked the Board a simple question “How much will administering and scoring the Keystone Test cost the district?” For those of who are unfamiliar with this issue, the Keystone Test is mandated by Harrisburg and students are required to pass it in order to graduate. SB Director Mrs. Graham, in her legislative report, told us that Superintendents of low performing school districts have already gotten a waiver that allows them to graduate 10% of the students who fail the test and opens the door for them to get additional waivers through a request process. Our high performing district is already committed to delivering an exceptional education so the test is nothing more than a nusance. So let us understand the situation; instead of having the courage to confront the low performing school districts and demand that they improve, our legislature, has required all districts to take a test designed to force underperforming districts to get better…but the underperforming districts can get waivers for their students. The districts who don’t need the testing,like TE, because they are already high performing will be forced to waste money on a test that they don’t need and the lower performing districts will be forced to waste money on a test and then not be held accountable for their failing scores. This is the kind of wasteful bureaucratic thinking that comes from career politicians. Wouldn’t it be better if this money were spent on additional TEACHERS? Why are we doing the test? Who does it benefit? Follow the money. The School Board told us last night that they have no idea what this is going to cost, and they seemed like they felt helpless against Harrisburg. An administrator informed me after the meeting that the State has already issued a $200,000,000 contract to a Midwest Company to develop and score the test. There are 501 School Districts in PA, so if that administrator was correct that breaks down to approximately $400,000 per district. Since we are one of the larger districts expect our actual cost to be more. All of this for a test that most people in the educational community don’t want and taxpayers should not have to fund. What special interest group is at work here? This is the nonsense that gets me upset.
Some people are concerned that I am a grass roots politician. Let me explain where I stand. I am against special interest groups wasting our money. I am against back room insider deals. I believe in effective local government, where each of us has input, and I distrust mandates from afar. I want every citizen to have a voice….not just conservatives like me but liberals and moderates. When people of good will come together and share their perspectives we as a community make better decisions because we are truly seeing things from all angles. Look at the Keystone Test situation; if the community came together and decided to take any savings we would realize from eliminating the Keystone test and split the savings between the taxpayers and the schools who wouldn’t sign up to push back on Harrisburg? That would be a win-win situation. What would happen if both Democrats and Republicans agreed to only support candidates for the state legislature who pledged to get rid of the Keystone Test? We could speak as a united community. We could lead the way for other municipalities around the state to join us and chip away at the special interest’s control of Harrisburg. Together we can accomplish amazing things.
