Teachers told they are key to future

Friday, August 22, 2003

By Judy Laurinatis, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

State Education Secretary Vicki Phillips told Penn Hills teachers yesterday her department wants to work with them to build a better public education system.

"Pennsylvania has yet to decide what it wants to be when it grows up, educationally," Phillips said.

But by creating better early childhood education, adolescent literacy and staff development priorities, she thinks that situation can be changed.

Phillips was in the middle of a four-school swing through the region this week addressing teachers' in-service staff meetings at Keystone Oaks, Ligonier Valley, Penn Hills and Woodland Hills in the past two days alone.

Phillips believes the state will have to put its resources -- including an increased share of educational payments -- behind the communities so that students can reach achievement levels required by federal law.

She said the state also must get behind practices proven to boost student performance and be willing to pay for them.

She said districts have to be able to share success stories.

"Penn Hills has a lot to be proud of," Phillips said.

She cited the 28 percent rise in Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests reading scores and 13 percent increase in math scores by last year's junior class, compared with last year's seniors, after administrators, teachers and students devised a campaign to make sure 11th-grade students took the tests seriously.

Phillips said the district should be able to share its insights with other schools.

The Falls-of-Rough, Ky., native -- who grew up in poverty and went on to become executive assistant to that state's secretary of education, the superintendent of Lancaster, Pa., city schools and Pennsylvania's education secretary -- said she has been lucky.

"I got my start by luck. Children should get that chance by design," she said.

"She has practical experience and that means a lot to a teacher," said Claire Davidson, who teaches English at Penn Hills High School.

Davidson and her colleague, Jeff Carey, in his second year as an English teacher at the high school, applauded enthusiastically at Phillips' comments.

"It seems like she cares," Carey said.

Maybe it'll have a trickle-down effect, he added.

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