At the Lehighton Area School Board meeting last night Gretchen Laviolette, principal of the East Penn and Franklin elementary schools, and Gloria Bowman, director of Curriculum, Instructions and Grants, suggested a few initiatives the district could adopt to continue the progress it has seen in its standardized testing results.

Their findings, which were based on the last five years of testing, found mostly positive increases in the percentage of students who scored proficient or advanced on the math portion of the PSSA test, and more mixed results on the reading section for those same students.At the elementary school level, they suggested more practice of open ended questions, offering students more writing samples with rubrics, and increasing non-fiction texts in the curriculum, a reading area that seems to be of particular trouble to students.Decreases in reading proficiency at the fourth grade level may be influenced by the test itself, which may be geared more toward fifth graders.PSSAs are taken for the last time in 11th grade. Bowman and Laviolette found that, after seeing initial increases in the eighth grade results, these gains dropped off in the junior year test. They agreed with the school board that many high school juniors aren't as interested in PSSA testing so close to SATs and graduation."A lot of that's motivational, and they're not seeing the desire to do their best on it," Laviolette believes.To incentivize high schoolers, the board is entertaining the possibility of making the PSSA a graduation requirement.High School Principal Timothy Tkach thinks there might be an opportunity to turn the end of day flex time into a remediation period for seniors who've underperformed on the PSSA and need to retake the test, and a chance for those students in good academic standing to leave early.As part of this initiative, the board also approved the posting of a part-time, temporary K-4 Literacy Tutor/Coach from January through March, 2011. Elementary certification is required and a background in Reading is preferred.Jennifer Brown and Brad Haupt were hired as after-school tutors for English and math, respectively.The school board accepted the resignation of Dr. Nicholas Brogno, school psychologist, effective Dec. 31. Brogno is retiring after 23 years in the district.The board approved the hiring of Wanda Rousenberger for the school psychologist position, effective Dec. 6.Jonathan J. Cleaver was approved for the Curriculum & Instruction position, exact date to be determined by the administration.