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By CECE TODD; Times Leader Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 1997 Page: 3
Want to study foreign language? Go to Nanticoke. Explore the environment?
Try Crestwood or Hanover or Pittston. Experience a wide range of academic
programs and activities? Check out Hazleton.
The school district profiles prepared by the state Department of Education
might not be the best resource for evaluating academic programs at each
Luzerne County high school.
But they do give some indication of what each school has to offer.
“The intention is to inform the public about programs offered at each
school,” said Chris Corbe, spokeswoman for the Education Department. “But it’s
up to each school to interpret what they offer.”
This is how it works: The department sends a checklist of academic
programs, opportunities and initiatives to each school, and the principal or
superintendent checks off each one the school offers.
The problem: The state doesn’t define the items on the list. So what one
school might define as “enrichment programs,” another might not.
The state then compiles the information from the schools and includes it in
each district’s profile. The 1995-96 profiles, offered last week via CD-ROM
and the Internet, provide the first comprehensive, statistical information
about Pennsylvania’s public schools, state officials said.
Most school districts provided profile data, but some, such as Northwest
Area, left out information about academic programs. And the districts that
provided details were not consistent in defining certain courses.
For example, in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District, GAR Memorial and
Meyers high schools offer three times as many academic programs as Coughlin
High School – according to the profiles.
Not so, says Coughlin Principal William Schwab. “We have the same
curriculum as Meyers and GAR. … If ours reads a little shorter, perhaps I’m
shorter-winded.”
According to the profiles, college courses are offered in the Crestwood,
Dallas, Hazleton Area and Lake-Lehman districts, and at GAR and Meyers in
Wilkes-Barre. But although the profile doesn’t show it, students at Coughlin
are able to take college courses through Wilkes University and King’s College.
“If I was a parent … I would not be able to say, `Do I want my kid to go
here versus here?’ based on these profiles,” Schwab said.
Other profile highlights:
Greater Nanticoke Area is the only Luzerne County high school to offer
nontraditional foreign language courses and foreign language courses at “level
5 and above.” Superintendent Tony Perrone could not be reached to explain what
that means.
Crestwood, Hanover Area and Pittston Area high schools have environmental
education centers.
Hazleton Area is the only county school district to offer the
High-Schools-That-Work initiative.
The Hazleton initiative is a model for a state program that looks at how
schools prepare students who plan to enter a trade or trade school upon
graduation.
“We need to challenge these students in a different way,” said Hazleton
Area Superintendent Geraldine Shepperson. For instance, students who plan to
be cosmetologists need chemistry courses they can apply to cosmetology.
“We’re trying to make the classes more meaningful to students. They lose
interest when it has no relevance to them.”
Of all the county’s schools, Hazleton had the broadest range of academic
programs listed in the profile. Shepperson attributed that to the district’s
efforts to offer an academic curriculum for students going to college and a
career-oriented curriculum for students who expect to become employed upon
graduation from high school.
“Some students will never read Macbeth, but they do need to be able to read
a newspaper and draw meaningful information from the newspaper,” Shepperson
said.