Buckling down, measuring up, and bubbling to the finish line. Time for the PSSA.
by Timothy Boyle on Apr 12 2010 Posted in Boyle's law
The PSSA has descended upon Philadelphia. While my fourth graders don't take the science section until the 26th, we've been prepping for over a month now.
The Office of Teaching and Learning suggested we start implementing strategies 60 class days before the test, which was January 22nd. The Meeting the Challenge document provided by Teaching and Learning contains strategies to work on every day in addition to the core curriculum.
Some of the strategies are already part of what I would normal teach such as "having students use their science notebooks to collect and analyze data" or "state Big Ideas frequently." Other strategies like "use the Elimination Strategy to choose the right answer to multiple choice questions" are very difficult to implement in the course of teaching the core curriculum.
The day I was supposed to go over test-taking strategies I was conducting a performance assessment of my students' knowledge of electromagnetism. Students cannot use a multiple-choice test in lieu of a performance assessment. It defeats the purpose FOSS's formative assessment. Having met some of the people who worked on developing the assessments, I trust and agree with their work. So why does this disconnect exist?
The PSSA results makes or breaks your school. As the SPI ratings have shown, a school is as good as its PSSA scores. Schools that don't meet the cut scores receive Empowerment status.
Empowerment, and all its forms of intervention, will not raise my students' science scores. Content knowledge will raise my students' scores. Empowerment status would actually make it next to impossible to implement science instruction with
