The Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, also known as PSSA, measures how well students have achieved in reading and mathematics according to Pennsylvania’s world-class academic standards. By using these standards, educators, parents and administrators can evaluate their students’ strengths and weaknesses to increase students’ achievement scores. According to the federal No Child Left Behind Act, students must be 100 % proficient in reading and math by 2014.

On this site you will find District and School Reports that contain: * Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets and results for 2007-08 * Last year's results and next year's targets * Discussion of results for parents and educators

EdNA (Education Names and Addresses) can be used to find name, address, administrator, and related information about the educational entities that PDE serves. These entities include school districts and their schools, intermediate units, area vocational technical schools, charter schools, nonpublic and private schools, higher education institutions, and many more.

This article articulates several problems with seeing a film from the eyes of a child as the protagonist, in how most films normally portray their younger characters. Lopate quickly summarizes the plots of two films he sees as distinct in their treatment of child protagonists, and then elaborates on the problems of representation that child-focused films offer. His primary argument is that the narrative generally stays too close to one character’s viewpoint, giving the impression that the director shares every sentiment of the child, and often glibly gives the children the moral upper hand. His second criticism is that children are just vehicles for the adults’ own fantasies of  “purity, spontaneity, victimhood, and indomitability,” preventing the audience from seeing the situation objectively. Finally, he mentions how camera focus on one character results in a narrow-minded, claustrophobic portrayal of the outside world rather than the expansive, objective film should, in theory, present. He also mentions briefly how children are commonly grouped as simple emblems of joy or martyrdom. 
    Lopate brings up many interesting points, several of which are relevant to Vigo’s film, and several of which Vigo actively goes against. For example, Vigo willfully and consciously gives his children the moral upper hand, because for him, the children represent a pointed opposition to the adult concept and possession of power, one that they can battle with whimsy, playfulness, imagination, creativity, and dream. However, Lopate’s second argument that children are simply vehicles for the adults’ own fantasies of “spontaneity and indomitability” is a very valid point which challenges my thesis quite excellently. If an adult such as Vigo is still the one writing and directing the film, is the film not just a portrayal of adult fantasies, rather than children’s? Even Agee agreed that the children in the film were not a comprehensive view of all childhood. Perhaps the adult behind the camera is using the children as a vanguard for his own conception of a revolution? Vigo, however, has a noted personal and emotional stake in the filmmaking. As an anti-authoritarian, he believes that the school system can only be opposed by those who are subject to its prison-hold on their imagination, the children, of whom he identifies with most, because of their symbol as oppressed which he empathizes with both personally and politically.

full citation: Phillip Lopate. "When the 'I' In a Film Is a Child's." New York Times (16 Mar. 1997): 13. EBSCO MegaFILE. EBSCO. University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt Library, Philadelphia, PA. 2 Dec. 2008 .

An anarchist world...a surrealist world: they are the same. -Andre Breton Jean Vigos film Ziro de Conduite was banned when first released in 1933, due to potentially incendiary content, and it provoked a near riot at a press gathering that same year. The film, which concerns a rebellion of French boarding school students against their faculty masters, was an emotional and personal undertaking for Jean Vigo, whose anarchist upbringing colored his view on school and authority. As a result, he created a film that was distinctly anti-authoritarian in almost every respect. This paper will argue that Jean Vigo's masterpiece "Zero de Conduite" is a paragon of anti-authoritarian film, because it subverts power and authority at a political and cultural level by targeting not only the antagonists of the film, but eventually, through surrealism, the structure of the film itself. As a result, "Zero de Conduite" became hugely influential to the political and cultural upheaval of 1968, and anticipated many of the theories and actions of the Situationist International, responsible in large part for the student uprisings of May 1968 in Paris. To this day, Vigo's work and its implications remain influential to the modern anarchist movement, which necessitates both political and cultural revolution.

Depalma, Anthony. "With Jobs Scarce, Many Turn to Graduate School." New York Times 3 July 1991. 7 Apr. 2008 .

     In this New York Times article, Anthony DePalma describes an economy in which jobs for newly graduated students are scarce and few in between. As a result, many college graduates are opting for graduate school. The students recently graduated are well aware of the scarcity in the labor market and know that finding a job after college would not be easy. Job recruiters are hiring almost half as many workers as they thought they would. Thus, graduate school applications are up by 20% in the largest 430 institutions that offer graduate programs. Graduate admissions directors know that during a poor economic period, it's common for graduate school applications to increase. However, they will only be able to accept 2% more applicants than in previous years. Another problem is that less financial aid will be available because of budget constraints and cuts due to the bad economy.
    In The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock graduated from a prestigious school in the Northeast with a stellar record that includes being editor of the school paper for two years and captain of the track team. Despite these achievements, he is without a job come graduation. His father recognizes this problem and urges him to apply to graduate school and become a doctor or lawyer. While the status of the economy is not mentioned in the movie, Mr. Braddock realizes that his son is wasting his talent by sitting beside the pool each day. On another note, by not getting a job Benjamin is refusing to conform to the social norms of his day. Although his father wants him to get a job or attend graduate school, Benjamin doesn't want to do either.

One of the most important and oldest glass blowing schools in the U.S. Founded by Dale Chihuly in 1971, they hold residential classes every year from May through August. Five visual artists, usually from outside of the field of glass are in residence each summer.