{"id":191053,"date":"2026-05-13T10:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/191053\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T10:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:07:07","slug":"pa-schools-are-struggling-amid-a-reading-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/191053\/","title":{"rendered":"PA schools are struggling amid a reading \u2018recession’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inside William Penn\u2019s recovery strategy<\/p>\n

William Penn serves approximately 5,000 students from the boroughs of Aldan, Colwyn, Darby, East Lansdowne, Lansdowne and Yeadon. A majority of the district\u2019s students in Delaware County come from economically disadvantaged households.<\/p>\n

The district was among six that successfully sued Pennsylvania in 2014, arguing that the state\u2019s funding model was discriminatory and unconstitutional. A landmark ruling in 2023 sided with the districts, but it did not immediately resolve the district\u2019s persistent money problems.<\/p>\n

Becoats\u2019 introduction to the district coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the decline in the nation\u2019s reading test scores predates the quarantine, the period of subsequent shutdowns and social-distance learning saw the cratering of academic measures of success across the board<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pandemic basically highlighted the fact that there were districts in Pennsylvania that did not have some basic resources, I would say, that were needed for our 21st-century education,\u201d Becoats said.<\/p>\n

He said William Penn did not let the pandemic upend the implementation of its strategic plan.<\/p>\n

In fact, he said, the district leveraged the influx of federal relief dollars to purchase more educational tools, provide professional development for teachers and improve the infrastructure of the buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition to that, we also implemented an instructional model that focused on supports being in schools,\u201d Becoats said. \u201cSo every school had an instructional facilitator. Every school had two academic interventionists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers behind the Education Scorecard also highlighted<\/a> William Penn\u2019s use of frequent assessments to track student progress, along with quarterly review sessions and the hiring of a research supervisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we perfect? No,\u201d Becoats said. \u201c[In] no way, form or fashion are we perfect, but we have a model that I think works and we have a model that I believe will continue to move the district forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

The role of money in academic recovery from the pandemic<\/p>\n

Becoats cautioned that any future breaks or gaps in funding could slow the trajectory of recovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now need to make sure that we continue to push the state and others to continue the level of funding that they provided for our district,\u201d Becoats said.<\/p>\n

His belief in the role of money in pandemic recovery is supported by the data.<\/p>\n

Education Scorecard researchers pointed out that much of the recovery has been \u201cU-shaped,\u201d meaning that more affluent districts and the poorest districts \u2014 buoyed by federal relief funds \u2014 have seen the largest improvements. School districts in the middle of the wealth spectrum have largely not seen such progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe median federal relief grant for the highest-poverty districts was $6,000 per student,\u201d Kane said. \u201cThat was about three times as high as the median grant for districts that were 40\u201350% poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without the federal grant money, researchers estimated, there would have been no recovery in math in the highest-poverty districts and even larger loss in reading in the highest-poverty districts.<\/p>\n

The Education Scorecard report highlights four priorities for education and policy leaders to adopt: Direct more resources to districts with lingering learning losses; lower chronic absenteeism; spend more money on research into student performance; and pair \u201cdistricts on the rise with similar underperforming peers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inside William Penn\u2019s recovery strategy William Penn serves approximately 5,000 students from the boroughs of Aldan, Colwyn, Darby,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9201,28,223,30,29,85099],"class_list":["post-191053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-covid-19-pandemic","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-education","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-school-test-scores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}