Harrisburg public schools failed by a wide margin to meet academic standards set by the state-appointed chief recovery officer, according to state Department of Education academic performance measures released today.
None of Harrisburg’s schools met the academic goals for the 2013-14 school year set forth by Chief Recovery Officer Gene Veno in an April 2014 amendment to his recovery plan for the district. Several schools fell short of these goals by about 20 points.
The state’s “Building Level Academic Score” uses a 100-point scale to measure school performance. Much like a student report card, a score above 90 is considered excellent, while a score below 70 is deemed poor.
The following list shows each school’s performance, followed by a number in parenthesis that includes Veno’s goals for each school for the 2013-14 academic year.
- Math Science Academy: 75.9 (94.2)
- Harrisburg High School SciTech Campus: 63.8 (72.3)
- Foose School: 57.8 (59.8)
- Scott School: 57 (62.4)
- Melrose School: 53.1 (69.7)
- Downey School: 49.4 (67.5)
- Benjamin Franklin School: 44.6 (63.5)
- Marshall School: 44.4 (61.4)
- Rowland School: 42.6 (56.5)
- Harrisburg High School: 39.7 (57.6)
- Camp Curtin School: 39.6 (60.3)
Scores are based upon several measures, including students’ performance on state standardized tests, improvement since the previous year, graduation and attendance rates and, in the case of high school students, SAT and ACT scores.
School Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney indicated during a press conference in September that scores would be poor, as she described the results as “very disappointing.” However, at the time, it was not known just how poorly the city’s schools had performed, as the state prohibited the release of the results until today.
Not only did school scores fail to meet Veno’s goals, many scores declined significantly from the prior year, before the recovery plan was put into effect.
Math Science Academy suffered perhaps the greatest year-to-year decline. During the 2012-13 school year, the school received an excellent score of 92, which last year fell to 75.9.
