SUNBURY – We hear so often about standardized testing and how our public schools are not teaching our kids what they need to know. Dan Perna is an education consultant and he says our schools are too harshly criticized, “The bum rap that there’re receiving has to do with the fact that the state levels have developed programs whereby we are trying to measure and test the effectiveness of schools, and what very few people understand is all of the factors that go into what occurs in a school.”
Perna, who was a administrator at the Shikellamy School District for eleven years and says when he was there in the 90’s, students had an opportunity for a more well-rounded and varied education, “Shikellamy had the most programs within any school district between Williamsport and Harrisburg area. Which meant we had students who were given the opportunity to vary what they were going to be taking in school.”
Dr. Perna says that schools are now focusing all of their energy on mathematics, reading and sciences and teaching to the tests, which is squelching variety, but worse than that, state and federal regulations are crushing any sense of culture in these schools, “What has happened in school is that it’s being dictated by state and federal government what should take place in that school, and therefore we many times remove the culture of the community away from the educational process of what we’re doing.”
Perna suggests that maybe the idea of grades shouldn’t be what a student should be so concerned with, “Should we be teaching kids to get a good grade, or should we be teaching kids to develop evidence that they’re learning? Not a grade, but that they are learning.”
You can hear the entire conversation with Dan Perna from his appearance on WKOK’s On The Mark at WKOK.com.
