Pennsylvania has a simple choice to make. We can embrace change and welcome educational reform, or we can choose to satisfy ourselves with the tired old policies of the past that, by any reasonable standard of measure, have failed our children.
In the last decade, we have made strides in developing tools that allow us to objectively measure our students’ successes and failures in the classroom. Because of these accountability tools, we have found that there are many schools that persistently fail to provide our children with a proper education. These schools fall in what we call the “bottom 5 percent.”
Senate Bill 1, which I have sponsored along with Sen. Anthony Williams of Philadelphia, is aimed at these 143 schools that are the poorest-performing in the state. Our legislation focuses on these “worst of the worst” schools and opens up opportunities for students who don’t have options. If there is ever a group in need of opportunity scholarships or “vouchers,” it is these kids who continue, through no fault of their own, to be trapped by their zip code and consigned to failure because they attend one of the bottom 5 percent schools. Read more.
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