Chairman of The Pennsylvania State Board of Education
On August 13, 2008, Governor Edward G. Rendell named Torsella the Chairman of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education.
Under Torsella's leadership, the State Board passed a landmark reform strengthening high school graduation requirements on August 13, 2009; the reform requires students to demonstrate proficiency in core subjects such as math, science, English and social studies prior to receiving a diploma. When an earlier proposal for graduation testing ran into heavy opposition from statewide education groups and was reversed by the legislature, Torsella brokered a compromise initiative that was approved by the state's Independent Regulatory Review Commission on October 22, 2009 and took effect beginning with the 2010-2011 school year.
The Board partnered with Pennsylvania's Department of Education to develop an application for the federal government's Race to the Top initiative, an incentive program designed to spur reform in K-12 education across the country . In the first round selection, Pennsylvania was seventh out of forty-one applicant states and submitted a second round application on June 1, 2010. To support that application, the Board expedited its review and adopted "Common Core" academic standards in math and English language arts. The winners of the next round will be announced in September 2010.
In other initiatives, the Board initiated reviews to improve school safety, held more than half of its meetings outside Harrisburg and urged a variety of measures to make college more accessible and affordable, including the creation of a "no frills" option in higher education. More recently, the Board advanced new regulations on school nutrition and physical activity to reduce childhood obesity, a response that has been called "the most comprehensive such standards in the nation."
On June 10, 2010, Governor Rendell tapped Torsella to lead Pennsylvania's participation in Complete College America, a 22-state effort to significantly increase college completion and accessibility by 2020.
Read more about this topic: Joe Torsella
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—Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965)
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