Competing Currents Are Altering the Course of Education in the Cove

Editor's Note: "The Changing Cove" series, written by Herald Correspondent George Berkheimer, won second place in the 2019 Professional Keystone Press Awards.

Since the introduction of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, an ongoing revolution has been waged in terms of how subjects are taught and how student proficiency is evaluated in public schools.

School systems throughout the nation are adjusting to many more transitions and changes occurring in the areas of technology, demographics and social mores.

For the foreseeable future, disruptive change is the status quo. Blackboards, bulb projectors and rote memorization are out. Laptops, digital textbooks and emailed assignments are in.

Standardized testing scores indicate how well Morrisons Cove's four school districts are handling the stresses of modern influences, but it's difficult to draw definitive conclusions from the limited historic data available.

Pennsylvania, in fact, had no academic expectations for students prior to the 1990s and didn't adopt its first set of standards in Mathematics, Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening until 1999.

Current Pennsylvania Common Core standards in math and English, based on the federal Common Core initiative, have been in place since 2010, but the legislative tug of war over mandated statewide graduation requirements based on the Keystone Exam in Literature, Biology and Algebra I, introduced in 2012, still hasn't been decided.

Test Scores

The good news is that Keystone Exam results improved in three of the Cove's four school districts between the 2013 and 2016 11th grade testing cycles.

Northern Bedford County High School (NBCHS) registered the best results in 2016, with 86.9 percent of students considered proficient or advanced in Algebra, 88.9 percent in Biology and 96.8 percent in Literature, up from respective levels of 76.7, 58.9 and 80.1 percent in 2013.

Central High School (CHS) students in the Spring Cove School District (SCSD) lost ground, with advanced or proficient levels dropping from 66.7 percent for Algebra, 56.5 percent for Biology and 76.4 percent for Literature in 2013 to 48.8, 48.1 and 73.2 percent respectively in 2016.

Although 2017 data is not yet included in the Pennsylvania Department of Education's online database, "The Keystone Exam has remained consistent for several years now, which has allowed us time to adjust our curricula to better support our students' success on these exams," said SCSD Superintendent Betsy Baker. "As a result, we are starting to see a steady increase in our Keystone scores.

Despite its own improvements, Claysburg-Kimmel High School (CKHS) ranked in the bottom 15 percent of state schools for performance on the combined Math and Reading tests on the 2015-2016 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and/or Keystone Exams.

Consequently, students there were eligible for scholarships allowing them to attend other public or nonpublic schools under the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Program, but CKHS Superintendent Darren McLauren said no students opted to transfer.

"I believe the majority of schools are extremely low [in math] in either 6th, 7th or 8th grade," said Northern Bedford County Superintendent Todd Beatty. "What I do know is that we are continuing to be specific with our professional development to combat this issue."

All school districts face the same challenge of balancing student needs with state expectations.

"We now test everybody at the 3rd, 5th, 8th and 11th grade levels," said Thomas Butler, executive director of Appalachia Intermediate Unit 8, the regional education service agency that oversees school districts in Blair and Bedford Counties. "But it has shifted the focus in each school district from programming and teaching to a question of how do we get the best test scores. There is now an increased focus on content and test preparation."

Trends

Three school districts in the Cove have experienced a steady decline in enrollment that began around 2005, belying their own steadily increasing populations. As of the current school year, enrollment numbers have dropped from 1,210 to 964 at Northern Bedford County School District (NBCSD) since 2005, from 932 to 848 at Claysburg, and from 563 to 473 at the Williamsburg Community School District (WCSD).

Spring Cove's enrollment increased from 1,905 to 1,922, but did see decline in the interim years.

"Jobs and infrastructure are usually the main reasons that lead to population shifts," said McLauren.

"We have some families who elect homeschooling, private schools or cyber charter schools," said Baker. "There were fewer options [in earlier years] ... but we actually have fewer students choosing the alternative schools. Generally, I think people are just living longer and having smaller families."

Beatty and McLauren reported no significant change in discipline cases within their school districts.

Baker, however, acknowledged an increase in reports of student misconduct within SCSD, "but that is also because we are more vigilant and proactive in addressing incidents," she said. "Tobacco violations tend to be one of the most prevalent along with fighting, bullying and possession of drug paraphernalia."

Students are exposed to an unfortunate abundance of violence and drug use though the Internet and other media sources, she added, "but we provide education to help students make good choices and the great majority of our students do so."

Technology

Butler said he sees technology as a double-edged sword, enabling more personalization of education in the technology-enabled school districts that can afford it, but requiring a huge monetary commitment to install and maintain an adequate broadband and technology infrastructure.

"There has always been a challenge in securing adequate funding for [Morrisons Cove's] schools," he said. "Property tax revenues don't provide nearly the amount of support they need."

At the moment, "Most school districts are pretty well connected," Butler said, with some districts implementing 1:1 initiatives where every student has some type of connected device.

As he sees the issue, student access to technology helps schools arrive at the "sweet spot" of a blended approach to education using both face-to-face and virtual instruction, with benefits that include access to teachers after hours and potential mitigation of instruction time lost to illness, travel and snow days.

"We recently surveyed our students and over 90 percent indicated they did have Internet access at home," McLauren said. "There will always be a digital divide, but we are looking at ways in reducing the gap."

According to Beatty, the ratio of Northern Bedford students with Internet access at home is closer to 70 percent.

"We provide all of the technology tools that our students need, so no student is at a disadvantage by not having a personal device or Internet access," Baker added.

Williamsburg Community School District Superintendent Lisa Murgas was not available for interview and did not respond to a request to provide comments for this article.

What's Positive?

McLauren cited charter school funding as an ongoing problem "because it takes money from our district. Fortunately, we have a very supportive partner in our local education foundation, which has supplemented our funding over the last year."

CHS offers mental health, drug and alcohol counseling on site through outside agencies and county services, with teachers and school counselors also providing individualized and small group support, Baker said.

Also, she said, CHS students can now choose electives in the biomedical field or robotics, "and we are exploring options to hopefully introduce a cybersecurity program in the future."

In terms of graduation rates, NBCSD registered 93.3 percent in the 2014-2015 cohort, CKHS registered 94.4, CHS registered 96.9, and Williamsburg Community High School had a 100 percent success rate.

SCSD uses its cyber school program as an option for students who want to earn their diploma but need flexible hours or a different environment to do so, Baker explained.

"Honestly, today, most people realize how important a diploma is to their future success, and it is not as easy to get a GED as it once was," she said. "If students remain in school, they have a lot of educators who sincerely care about them and want them to be successful and will do whatever they can to help them achieve their goal."

Editor's Note: It might seem like little changes in the Cove. But that's not true. "The Changing Cove" is an occasional series which takes a "big picture" look at how Morrisons Cove is changing.

Comments on the published story and suggestions for future stories are welcome. Please direct them to news@mcheraldonline.com.