A Penny For Your PSSA Test Thoughts
Submitted by Frank Murphy on July 26, 2011
Not long after Congress passed the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, I attended a principals’ meeting where a regional staffer briefed us on the future implications of this new piece of legislation. Schools in districts across the state had been participating in the administration of the PSSA test for several years prior to this new federal accountability mandate. At that time, test results for the three grades being assessed (grades 5,8, and 11), were reported back to individual districts simply as average scale scores for each of their schools. With NCLB, all students in grades 3- 8 and grade 11 would now be required to take the PSSA. This would be phased in over a few years to give the state time to develop tests at each grade level. NCLB also dramatically changed the manner in which states and school districts would be expected to communicate test results to the public. From this point forward, scoring bands labeled Advanced and Proficient were introduced to describe those students