PA Cyber ‘gold standard’ for online education
Richard W. Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education, greets Lincoln Park senior Samantha Berry duri
PA Cyber ‘gold standard’ for online education; former U.S. Education Secretary tours
August 19, 2009
MIDLAND, Pa. – “I’m so proud of what you have done and are doing here. This is a time when we really need to be looking at new and better ways of doing things,” said Richard W. Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education, during a visit to the PA Cyber Charter School Wednesday.
Riley said the story of how rustbelt steel town Midland transformed itself into a center for education reminds him of how his home area of Greenville reinvented itself as an automotive manufacturing center after the textile industry left.
”Education is becoming more innovative than compliance-driven,” said Riley. “Remember the word ‘innovation.’ Creativity and innovation. That’s what we Americans do better than anybody else.”
Dr. Nick Trombetta, CEO of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, led the tour and explained events which led to the creation of PA Cyber. The 9,000-student school is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2010.
Riley led the nation’s education department from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He was accompanied on the tour by two former Congressmen, Ron Klink of Pennsylvania and Thomas Sawyer of Ohio.
”I came here to learn and man, did I. The kind of program that has been put together here at PA Cyber is the gold standard,” said Sawyer, now a state senator from Akron who recently played a key role in preserving cyber charter school funding in Ohio’s new biennial budget.
Himself a former teacher, Sawyer said he does not give charter schools unqualified support, believing that poor performers should be weeded out and best practices, such as those he saw at PA Cyber, should be incorporated into traditional schools.
Klink said cyber education offers the potential that “every great lesson from every great teacher is available to every student, no matter where they live.”
As members of the LLP law firm of Washington and South Carolina, Riley and Klink offered to help the National Network of Digital Schools (NNDS) duplicate PA Cyber’s success in the new charter school environment of South Carolina. A nonprofit management foundation, NNDS (www.nndsonline.org) provides Lincoln Interactive online curriculum to 185 schools in 11 states.
Riley said Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough has provided free legal services for the past 10 years to poor, primarily African-American school districts in South Carolina’s “Corridor of Shame” in a fight for more state funding.
Democrats who both served in Congress during Riley’s tenure, Klink and Sawyer had high praise for the work he did during that time.
Riley “has been the most effective Secretary of Education our nation has ever seen,” said Klink.
Some 200 local dignitaries and residents heard comments by Riley, Sawyer and Klink following the tour in Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center’s studio theater Wednesday morning.
Midland Mayor Angela Adkins, Wellsville (Ohio) Mayor Joseph Surace, and Hancock County (W.Va.) Commissioner Michael Swartzmiller were among those who toured with Riley.
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