Grading our schools: 5 area districts improve PSSA scores
Five county school districts improved from last year's ranking in Times-Shamrock newspapers' annual analysis of academic performance.
The districts - Mahanoy Area, Minersville, Pine Grove, Shenandoah Valley and Williams Valley - showed improvement in Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test scores compared with state averages.
The newspapers analyzed 2009-10 PSSA test scores and SAT test scores for 500 districts and more than 3,000 schools statewide, as well as a dozen other key educational factors as part of its annual Grading Our Schools special report. Districts were also ranked in each category against other districts in the state. Test results for the 2010-11 school year are not yet available.
This year's Grading Our Schools report includes charts on the region's 15 public school districts, as well as comprehensive online databases with searchable information on all 500 school districts in the state available at http://republicanherald.com/data-center. The databases include educators' profiles with salaries, financial information, district and student demographics and test scores.
Statistics and PSSA scores are available for public school districts that fall entirely or partially within Schuylkill County: Blue Mountain, Hamburg Area, Hazleton Area, Mahanoy Area, Minersville Area, North Schuylkill, Pine Grove Area, Pottsville Area, Saint Clair Area, Schuylkill Haven Area, Shenandoah Valley, Tamaqua Area, Tri-Valley, Upper Dauphin Area and Williams Valley.
A closer look
In 2009-10, Shenandoah Valley met state averages in third-grade reading, fifth-grade writing, sixth-grade reading and eighth-grade reading, math and science, after falling below those averages in 2008-09.
"It is always good to improve and in a school like ours with such an increased enrollment of (English as a second language) students, it's a tribute to good teaching," Philip Andras, Shenandoah Valley high school principal, said Monday. "We have the largest ESL population in (Intermediate Unit 29) and our goal is to increase the proficiency of students who have limited proficiency in reading and writing as well as putting other interventions in place to help our students succeed."
Andras said most recently, the district has gone to a standard alignment system as a curriculum model, which provides resources for aligning a district's curriculum to current state standards.
"Some may see it as teaching to the test, but I don't see it that way," Andras said. "I think it's a very good effort and we will continue to look at reading and writing, which we have already shown improvement in.
Grading On The Curve - News
"There is always a new direction to take in education and we are always trying to stay ahead of the curve." Andras also touted the current expansion project as a "temporary inconvenience to provide a permanent improvement in education.
The curve for 2003 is higher at every Composite score point than the 1991 curve, which is evidence of the existence of grade inflation. However, the amount of grade inflation varies for different Composite score values: it is highest between the scores
Grading on a curve, or maybe it's a hard slider, against the rest of baseball, the team has passed some crucial tests in the first half but still have some makeup assignments to complete in the second half. The Dodgers have used seven starters and
In other words, creditworthiness is graded on a curve. Has it gotten any easier to score high grades over the years? There's some evidence that Moody's and Standard & Poor's loosened their grading standards, especially for mortgage-backed securities
For another way of looking at the researchers' data, they produced showing how grading curves have changed over the same period . In the 1960s, the peak of the curve was at C (putting famous C-student George W. Bush firmly the middle of the pack when
PUE: Time to Start Grading on the Curve? « Data Center Knowledge
Scott Noteboom of Yahoo, whose Yahoo Computing Coop design has earned one of those industry-leading PUE ratings, says the facility’s PUE of 1.08 has drawn global attention to the project in Lockport, N.Y. Noteboom is proud of his data center’s efficiency. But that rating reflects a snapshot of the facility’s operations at a point in time, he noted.
“Most of us in the data center have defined PUE while operating at the sweetest spot possible,” Noteboom said Tuesday at the AFCOM Data Center World conference in Las Vegas. “We usually don’t operate at that optimal PUE. On day one of the data center, before you have a lot of equipment installed, it’s absolutely feasible that your PUE could be 100-plus.”
The PUE metric championed by The Green Grid compares a facility’s total power usage to the amount of power used by the IT equipment, revealing how much is lost in distribution and conversion. PUE measurements tend to improve as a data center nears full utilization, which is one reason why large users such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft report industry-leading ratings in the 1.1 to 1.2 rang
So how do you make the best use of PUE in building and operating a data center? Noteboom says he favors grading on the curve – the sloping curve as PUE readings gradually improve as the data center moves toward full utilization (and optimum PUE).
“We’re seeing big wins in defining PUE at all levels of capacity,” said Noteboom. “In order to truly model your electricity costs, you have to know your PUE at100 kilowatts and at 20 megawatts. We’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on how to build in increments.”
Yahoo fills its data center capacity in pods of about 200 kilowatts each, Noteboom said. The mechanical and electrical equipment to support each pod is deployed when the pod comes online, allowing Yahoo to gradually increase its power requirements and match the IT load and facility power.
Noteboom was among the prominent speakers Tuesday at the spring Data Center World conference sponsored by AFCOM, the largest industry group for data center professionals. Former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton provided the keynote address. The AFCOM event continues Wednesday and Thursday at the Mirage resort in Las Vegas.
SHARE THIS STORY:I’ve long been a proponent of a weighted PUE. partial loading, ultimate size, and ability to calculate energy and resource (such as water) consumption over time rather than a snap shot of one scenario gives a much better description of how a data center truly operates. Also, the ability to utilize onsite renewable energy can make a huge difference in consumption of conventional energy on a real-time, daily, monthly, or annual basis, but really has no bearing on PUE.
-laughs- If Katie is the curve you're grading on, most folks are normal then.
": Colorado very lucky to escape without multiple reds. Saved by the ref apparently grading on a curve." 's
Colorado very lucky to escape without multiple reds. Saved by the ref apparently grading on a curve.
Grading her on the female soldier curve, she's pretty cute. LmaoGrading On The Curve - Bookshelf
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