B-W School District Leaders 'Disappointed' Over Pittsburgh Business Times Rankings; Raising Taxes Not Their Solution

There was nothing pretty about it. When the Pittsburgh Business Times unveiled its , Baldwin-Whitehall found itself placed 53rd out of 105 Western Pennsylvania public school districts, officially falling into the rankings’ lower half.

As recently as 2008, that same publication ranked Baldwin-Whitehall 39th in Western Pennsylvania, followed by declines to 43rd in 2009, 47th last year, and of course, 53rd in 2011.

The publication bases its rankings on how districts perform in Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams.

“We look at three years of scores,” the Pittsburgh Business Times says on its website, “with the current year (2009-10 school year results) given the most weight.”

Given those criteria, Superintendent Dr. Lawrence C. Korchnak said that B-W’s ranking this year should come as no surprise.

“The composition of those scores, the three years,” Korchnak said, “with most of the emphasis placed on last year, we just didn’t have a good year last year.

“The bottom line of it is we’re sustaining levels dealing with issues (like special-needs and English-as-a-second-language students),” Korchnak said. “Probably the biggest decline in our scores came the year after we brought a lot of our more troubled kids out from alternative placements and brought them into the district—about two, three years ago.”

Korchnak was asked to elaborate on what types of students those were.

“For example,” he said, “whether they’re emotional, whether they’re special-needs issues—students are sometimes put in, what they say, an alternative, private placement.

“At one point, we had a great number of our most specially needed students out (of regular district schools). We brought them back in. And we brought them back in about the time when our scores began to decline.”

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, 129 and 157 special-needs students took the PSSA exams in math and reading, respectively, for Baldwin-Whitehall in 2009-10 (6.3 and 7.6 percent of the total B-W test-takers in those categories), and 69 took both the science and writing exams that year (7.5 and 7.4 percent, respectively).

The PA Department of Education identifies special-needs students as IEP students, or those having individualized education programs.

Still, by comparison, the , which the Pittsburgh Business Times ranked first in Western Pennsylvania and in all of Pennsylvania for the sixth consecutive year in 2011, had 12.1 and 13.5 percent of their math and reading test-takers, respectively, listed as IEP. For science and writing, Upper St. Clair’s test-taking IEP numbers were 13.9 and 11.6 percent, respectively.

Korchnak said that the IEP variable is “not an excuse” for Baldwin-Whitehall but “a factor” in its performance on the PSSA exams. He also cited the B-W school district’s as another factor.

“Everyone knows—at least the research indicates—that you need three to four years in a country to get assimilated with a language,” he said. “Yet, (ESL) students still have to take the (PSSA) tests after a year.”

Korchnak was quick to point out, however, that his district’s ESL population “can’t be an excuse” because the B-W school with the highest ratio of test-takers that are ESL students is , which Korchnak says scored “as good as the rest” as his district’s other schools.

In fact, the percentage of all Paynter Elementary test-takers that scored below basic levels in three out of the four tested subjects in 2009-10 is either the lowest or second-lowest rate among the district’s four tested schools. (, and are the others.) The only exception is in reading, where Paynter’s below-basic rate is the highest.

( students are not tested.)

“There are a lot of factors that are explanations,” Korchnak said. “None of them are excuses.

“My sense of it is this: We’ll work really hard. We’re not happy with the ranking …

“I came here (in February 2008) on the behest of the search committee to make some improvements. I believe we’ve put some fantastic things in place, and the administrative staff and teaching staff are not happy with not doing better.

“But they’re doing a good job in the classroom. They’re individualizing work with kids. They’re dealing with some of the more severe problems we have, but that’s with every (district).”

Korchnak also pointed out that B-W’s “overachiever” ranking by the Pittsburgh Business Times actually represents an upward swing in his district.

As the publication says on its website: “The (overall) rankings in this guide are based on standardized test scores and answer the question, ‘Which school or district has the highest-scoring students?’ This (overachievers) ranking … answer(s) the question, ‘Which school districts do better than expectations based upon economics?’

“It is widely acknowledged that the economic situation of a student is one of the strongest predictors of how well a student will perform academically—a low percentage of economically disadvantaged students generally results in a high percentage of top performances on the state’s standardized tests.

“This (overachievers) rank takes the (overall) rank and adds the percentage of students in the district eligible for free and reduced lunch into the formula. A district finishing high on this (overachievers) rank is smashing expectations, and any district above the median point is exceeding expectations.”

While Baldwin-Whitehall still finished in the lower half of Western Pennsylvania’s overachievers rankings this year (73rd), that is a significant improvement on its 88th-place finish in last year’s rankings in that category.

“We still have to not accept just ‘good enough,’” Korchnak said, “and I would say that these scores this past year were not good enough.”

The Baldwin-Whitehall Patch also reached Baldwin-Whitehall school board President George L. Pry for comment.

“We’re certainly disappointed in the scores,” Pry said. “We expected it would take a couple years for us to begin to make the improvements that we were all hopefully planning for. This is the year that I expected to see that improvement, and obviously, we did not. I know I personally am disappointed, and I’m sure the board is going to be equally disappointed in these scores.

“We do have a variety of different demographics that cause our scores, at times, not to be as high as we would like them to be, but at the same time, we expected improvement in ranking year after year.

“I do believe that there are a variety of different factors in here, but I don’t think they account for the lowering of our ranks … I do think we have to really begin to tear this issue apart and figure out what are the real issues underneath it and how we can make improvement. And that’s going to be a priority of the board in the next few months.”

Last year, the Baldwin-Whitehall school board approved a small decrease of 0.1 in its district’s millage rate, down from 23.5 to 23.4. The year before, the rate fell 0.11 mills. The rate was cut by a full mill the year before that.

Each mill generates approximately $1.5 million in funding for the school district.

Pry was asked, assuming that increased school funding would lead to improved PSSA results, if further reducing or even maintaining the district’s millage rate could be justified given the Pittsburgh Business Times’ recent rankings.

“I think (that)’s making too much of an assumption,” Pry said. “I believe that we’re not cutting those areas that are impacting those scores. We’re not cutting education at this point.

“Again, I think we have to find out what our issues are. To throw money at a problem isn’t gonna solve the problem. You have to be more strategic in that approach, and if the administration would come to us and say, ‘We need x, y and z to make this really change,’ I don’t think there’s anybody on this board that would not do that or make that happen …

“We’ve added money into the curriculum side. We’ve added money into trying to do support services … to help this, and so far, it has not made a difference. What we’re cutting I don’t believe—in my opinion—is germane to this issue.”

Korchnak said that he agreed with Pry.

“We’re going to go in with a flat (millage) rate—without an increase,” Korchnak said. “But that’s because we’re able to provide what we believe to be adequate services. We’re not cutting anything in an instructional vein.

“The fact that we didn’t do well is not because we didn’t put money into it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Pry said. “… There has not been a solid educational program that has not been funded by this board.”

Korchnak expressed optimism that Baldwin-Whitehall’s 2010-11 PSSA results would turn out to be better than last year’s, which would hopefully correspond to higher rankings by the Pittsburgh Business Times in 2012.

“I don’t think we’ll be disappointed two years in a row,” he said, “but only time will tell.”