Karen Molchanow, on the witness stand Friday and Monday, has been executive director of the State Board of Education since 2012. She described the board as the regulatory arm of the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
The board is responsible for establishing the state’s academic standards and assessments, among other duties.. Questioned by Education Law Center legal director Maura McInerney, Molchanow testified about the purpose of those standards.
Petitioners in the case have emphasized that Pennsylvania has committed itself to academic standards aimed at ensuring college and career readiness but has failed to support attainment of those standards with adequate funding.
The state academic standards are “foundational to the purpose” of education in Pennsylvania, Molchanow said, because they define what students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade level. She agreed that the adoption of the state standards “represents a real shift in instructional intent from high school completion to college and career readiness for every student.”
Pennsylvania adopted its current “PA Core Standards” for English language arts and math in 2014. Molchanow explained that, like most states, Pennsylvania had previously adopted the Common Core State Standards, but decided to tailor them to ensure that Pennsylvania stakeholders could have a voice. Schools are required to follow the academic standards that are adopted by the board and to align their curriculum and instruction to the standards, she said.
When the more challenging new standards were put in place, there was a decline in student proficiency rates on standardized tests, as the board expected. But Molchanow said, “The standards are not designed to be theoretical or aspirational…. We believe they should be rigorous to meet the needs of the Commonwealth in supporting workforce and economic competitiveness, as well as preparing students for entry into communities post-graduation.”
Molchanow said that whether schools had sufficient supports to enable students to meet the more rigorous standards has been “a concern of the board.”
Back in 2007, the board oversaw an analysis of the resources that were needed to meet academic standards – known as the “costing-out study.” Molchanow said the General Assembly has not asked the board to update the study in response to the updated standards. (One of our expert witnesses, Dr. Matthew Kelly, performed an independent analysis updating the current funding needed for districts to reach state standards, using benchmarks written in state law at the time of the original study.)
The board did address the costing out issue in a 2018 Master Plan for Basic Education, calling for a “periodic review of the costing-out study.”
In that plan, the board sought to highlight funding issues: “The Board encourages a discussion of ‘adequacy’ as it relates to school funding, followed by the provision of adequate resources for efficient management at state and local levels.”
Molchanow also spoke about a board goal of increasing the percentage of adults who hold a college degree of any kind, or a post-secondary industry credential, to 60% for Pennsylvanians ages 25-64.
When the state board of education adopted this in 2016, only 44% of Pennsylvania’s adult population had attained a degree or certification.
Molchanow said the board revised the attainment goal in 2018 to add language focusing on “closing the wide attainment gaps for historically underrepresented populations.”
There has been progress toward the 60% goal, Molchanow said. But there continues to be a gap between groups of Pennsylvanians.
A September 2021 presentation about the higher education master plan provided data showing attainment of a postsecondary credential of value among adults 25-64 was only 30% among Blacks and 24% among Latinos, compared to 47% among whites.
“The board had found this data to be concerning,” Molchanow said.
While postsecondary credential attainment topped 50% in the latest data, the presentation showed that Pennsylvania’s rate lags behind 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
Molchanow was followed on the stand by an expert witness on early education, Dr. Steven Barnett, founder and co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, at Rutgers University. Court will reconvene at 10 a.m. Tuesday. We will share more about his testimony when it is completed.