Relentless, is it?

The Pittsburgh Business Times school rankings are based on PSSA scores.  "We look at three years of scores, with the current year given the most weight," according to PBT.

 Posti's Relentless Pursuit of Excellence mentions:

The Pittsburgh Business Times' school rankings edition is out and once again, the news is good. Mt. Lebanon improved its seven-county regional position to Number 2 (up from Number 3 last year) behind Upper St. Clair and Number 5 statewide (up from Number 6 last year). I'm very proud of our students' accomplishments. I'm also proud of our faculty and administration who helped our students achieve these milestones by working in a new structure that puts building management in the hands of principals with curriculum supervision deployed by department chairs and managed by two assistant superintendents focused on elementary and secondary education.

In the PBT Guide to Western Pennsylvania Schools, Dr. Steinhauer attributed "our success to strong leadership from our principals and administrators, exceptional teachers, students who take the tests seriously and want to do well, and parents who support our efforts in the classroom."

According to a June 17, 2010 PG article, Changes could boost Mt. Lebanon in rankings, Dr. Steinhauer said that there was a motivation problem since some students saw little incentive to do well on the exams. There were no individual consequences for performing poorly. (Discussion meeting August 9, 2010)  On April 16, 2010, the Board approved the requirement of students achieving a proficient score in the 11th grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessments in order to graduate. Well, Dr. Tim was right. By requiring a decent score on PSSAs to graduate, that boosted the numbers.

Uh, Josephine, was "working in a new structure that puts building management in the hands of principals with curriculum supervision deployed by department chairs and managed by two assistant superintendents focused on elementary and secondary education" what caused those numbers to increase? Was it really "Relentless Pursuit of Excellence?"

According to the PG article, Dr. Tim was quoted as saying that we did not qualify for the U.S. News & World Report silver ratings.  By approving the high school's participation in the National School Lunch Program, its poverty rate percentages will be reported to Standard and Poor's for U.S. News & World Report's rankings. I am not sure there was ever a public vote for the national school lunch program since I cannot find it in the minutes. According to the CAFR, there is quite a jump in free or reduced lunches.  Interesting how we are now listed as a silver medal school on the U.S. News & World Report website. The demographic data is still from 2007-2008. 

This summer, when the board approves Dr. Tim's raise [yes, raise, not freeze], they can all say that he earned it because the PSSA scores went up and we have a silver rating again.

Now, about that budget...