1 1 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 2 HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEE HEARING 3 IN RE: HOUSE BILL 847 and HOUSE BILL 842 4 STATE CAPITAL RYAN OFFICE BUILDING 5 ROOM 205 HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 6 TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2007, 9:30 A.M. 7 8 9 10 BEFORE: 11 HONORABLE JAMES ROEBUCK, CHAIRMAN HONORABLE MICHAEL CARROLL 12 HONORABLE THOMAS QUIGLEY HONORABLE FRANK SHIMKUS 13 HONORABLE BARBARA MCILVAINE SMITH HONORABLE SCOTT CONKLIN 14 HONORABLE DAYLIN LEACH HONORABLE MARK LONGIETTI 15 HONORABLE RICHARD GRUCELA HONORABLE BERNIE O'NEILL 16 HONORABLE THOMAS MURT HONORABLE MICHAEL HANNA 17 HONORABLE DARYL METCALFE HONORABLE SAM ROHRER 18 HONORABLE ROBERT BASTAIN HONORABLE JAKE WHEATLEY 19 HONORABLE KAREN BEYER HONORABLE JOHN YUDICHAK 20 HONORABLE JOHN PALLONE HONORABLE THADDEUS KIRKLAND 21 22 23 24 25 2 1 I N D E X 2 TESTIFIERS PAGE 3 GERALD ZAHORCHAK 6 4 TIM ALLWEIN 33 5 RON COWELL 56 6 JOSEPH ACRI 76 7 BRIAN CASHMAN 77 8 DEBORAH WEAVER 81 9 STINSON STROUP 101 10 PAT CRAWFORD 106 11 JUDY BAUMGARDNER 109 12 KATHY JOHNSON 113 13 BOB HUGHES 120 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 3 1 CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Okay. Good morning. Let me 2 bring this House Education Committee meeting to order. I'm 3 Representative Jim Roebuck, Chairman of the Education 4 Committee, and this is the first in a series of committee 5 meetings which we'll be considering parts of the initiative 6 offered by the Governor in, as part of his budget proposals 7 for this year. 8 And we have two bills for consideration. Before 9 we go into the discussion of those bills, I'd like to ask 10 that the members of the committee might introduce 11 themselves. 12 REPRESENTATIVE CARROLL: I'm Representative Mike 13 Carroll from Luzerne and Monroe Counties. 14 REPRESENTATIVE QUIGLEY: Representative Tom 15 Quigley from Montgomery County. 16 REPRESENTATIVE SHIMKUS: Representative Frank 17 Shimkus, Lackawanna County. 18 REPRESENTATIVE MCILVAINE SMITH: Barbara 19 McIlvaine Smith, Chester County. 20 REPRESENTATIVE CONKLIN: Scott Conklin, Centre 21 County. 22 REPRESENTATIVE LEACH: Daylin Leach, Montgomery 23 County. 24 REPRESENTATIVE LONGIETTI: Mark Longietti, 25 Mercer County. 4 1 REPRESENTATIVE GRUCELA: Rich Grucela, 2 Northampton County. 3 REPRESENTATIVE O'NEILL: Bernie O'Neill from 4 Bucks County. 5 REPRESENTATIVE MURT: Tom Murt, Montgomery 6 County and Philadelphia County. 7 REPRESENTATIVE HANNA: Mike Hanna, Clinton and 8 Centre Counties. 9 CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you. And then I'd like 10 to have the two sponsors of the legislation we'll consider, 11 House Bill 847 and House Bill 842, give us just a brief 12 summary of their legislation, and then we can go to our 13 testimony, our presentations from our speakers. 14 REPRESENTATIVE CONKLIN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. 15 I'm very honored to be one of the sponsors of this 16 legislation. It's a very simple piece of legislation. 17 It's just adding a little bit extra educational 18 requirements to those individuals that are either a 19 principal or school board superintendent. 20 And what it's done, Mr. Speaker, is that they've 21 shown by studying this for a while in other states that 22 approximately 250 individuals in the state of Pennsylvania 23 have already passed the criteria which is asked for in the 24 piece of legislation. And the second part, what it's done, 25 it's shown that superintendents and supervisors that are 5 1 committed that are leaders that have the type of 2 background, their school systems are actually achieving 3 higher than those that do not. So it shows that good 4 leadership and good following is very important in the 5 education process. 6 CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Representative Grucela? 7 REPRESENTATIVE GRUCELA: Thank you, Mr. 8 Chairman. 9 My bill is rather simple as well. There's a 10 glitch in the Act 48 requirements that apparently has been 11 discovered in the dates, so somewhere in the middle of a 12 school year, someone who has not completed the Act 48 13 requirements, ends up finding out that they can no longer 14 teach the rest of the year. 15 It's a burden on the school districts. It 16 becomes somewhat as a surprise, so as a result, this 17 legislation would correct that little bit of sort of a 18 timing error that was in the original bill. So this will 19 help school districts immensely. It would also be a help 20 to those teachers whose dates fall for requirement of the 21 Act, not necessarily equal to or exactly the same as the 22 school year. 23 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 24 CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you. 25 We have, as usual, a rather ambitious agenda, 6 1 and we'll begin with the Secretary of Education, Dr. 2 Zahorchak. 3 DR. ZAHORCHAK: Thank you very much, Chairman. 4 And good morning, Chairman Roebuck, Chairman Stairs, 5 members of the House Education Committee, staff and guests. 6 With me today is Sharon Brumbaugh, who serves as Special 7 Assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Education, 8 and who manages our school leadership and teacher quality 9 initiatives. 10 We'd like to thank you for the opportunity to 11 discuss the administration's school leadership initiative 12 and ask you to support House Bill 847, which will lead to 13 better prepared superintendents and principals, and House 14 Bill 842, which will make technical changes to Act 48. 15 I would also like to thank Chairman Roebuck, 16 Chairman Stairs and Representative Grucela and 17 Representative Conklin for their commitment to improving 18 teacher quality and retention and for their dedication to 19 ensuring that all students in the Commonwealth have 20 highly-qualified teachers. 21 Good teaching produce high levels of student 22 achievement, and good leadership creates an environment in 23 which both students and teachers can excel. The research 24 is clear on both points; high quality teachers and 25 principals have an enormous impact on student achievement. 7 1 Because of this, Governor Rendell and the 2 Pennsylvania Department of Education, under my leadership, 3 have developed a comprehensive strategy comprised of 4 several targeted initiatives to ensure that every child 5 will be in a classroom with a highly skilled and successful 6 teacher who can help them achieve and in a school with a 7 principal who can demonstrate the leadership qualities that 8 result in both teacher and student success. 9 Last week, Dr. James Fogarty and Sharon 10 Brumbaugh testified about the Department's and the State 11 Board's efforts to improve teacher preparation, induction 12 and professional development through the regulatory changes 13 that are proposed in Chapter 49 of State Board regulations. 14 Today, I would like to focus on the development of quality 15 leaders for our schools. 16 The Administration and the Department know that 17 in order for our students and teachers to succeed, our 18 school leaders need to be of the utmost quality. Simply 19 put, no organization can reach its potential without 20 excellent leadership. However, we also know that no leader 21 can excel without the necessary and appropriate supports. 22 To address these needs, in 2005, the Department 23 of Education launched the Pennsylvania Inspired Leadership 24 program, a standards-based professional development program 25 for school leaders. There are two components in the 8 1 program. The first is called Grow, and Grow is a program 2 for novice principals and assistant principals in their 3 first through third years. And the second part is called 4 Support, and Support is a program for more experienced 5 principals, superintendents and other school leaders. 6 The focus of the P-I-L initiative is to provide 7 school leaders with high-quality professional development 8 that is based on the leadership standards recommended by a 9 working group of Pennsylvania educators. The standards 10 were drawn from research studies that identify leadership 11 behavior that have a direct impact on improving student 12 achievement. 13 These standards ensure that leaders trained in 14 the program emerge as strategic thinkers, are able to use 15 data to inform decision-making about student achievement 16 and understand how to create a learning environment that 17 supports teacher and student success. 18 The curriculum for the Grow program was 19 developed by the National Institute for School Leadership, 20 a division of the National Center for Education and the 21 Economy, and it provides the participants with the best 22 models of leadership development from education and other 23 professions, such as medicine, law and the military and 24 corporate worlds. 25 Job-embedded activities are part of the training 9 1 so that participants apply what they are learning in this 2 program to their work in schools. Administrators who 3 participate in PIL are better able to implement improved 4 leadership and management practices in their schools and 5 help teachers become more effective in the classroom. 6 As one principal commented, quote, the Grow 7 program brings principals closer to the information, to the 8 research and to the best practices involved with school and 9 curriculum design, along with student achievement. By 10 working with the National Institute for School Leadership, 11 PIL brings the nation's best educational leadership 12 training program to Pennsylvania. 13 In Massachusetts, NISL is training leadership 14 teams to go into the field to train local school leaders. 15 In Florida, NISL has trained school leadership teams in 16 Jacksonville.