The Pennsylvania Department of Education has a pre-existing State Committee, called the School Improvement Committee. Pennsylvania Secretary of Education, Gerald L. Zahorchak, designated this committee as the State Committee for MACC during a meeting on April 5, 2006 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The primary role of the School Improvement Committee is to build knowledge across the PDE about resources, practices and strategies that are employed to improve student outcomes, to gather information about the effectiveness of the practices and strategies and to build skills within PDE to implement a differentiated system of supports to districts and schools in different stages of improvement.
MACC will use the "MACC Survey of SEA Practices that Promote Systems of Support for Districts and Schools" [Word | 10 pages] to conduct an initial assessment of key SEA staff's knowledge of these practices and resources and, from there, to track changes in the knowledge of SEA staff that support internal cooperation.
MACC developed this survey to assess the needs of our states relative to the three MACC goals and to establish baseline data on state practices that will assist in planning technical assistance activities and tracking state progress toward meeting those goals. Technical assistance to the District of Columbia will be determined in part by analyzing the needs revealed by this survey.
The PDE School Improvement Committee is made up of SEA directors from across programs and divisions including School and District Improvement, Early Childhood and Elementary Education, Middle and Secondary Education, Teaching and Learning Support (Title I and Title III are included under this division), Special Education, Curriculum Development, Assessment and Accountability, Student Services and Support (Migrant Education is under this division), and Education Technology.