PSSA’s 

If you attended middle school in Pennsylvania, the acronym “PSSA” is likely to bring up some sort of traumatic response. If you have never taken a PSSA, they are essentially the SAT for middle schoolers in Pennsylvania, but instead of the students receiving a score that potentially gets them into college, the school system they attended would receive more or less funding depending on how their overall student body performed on the test. I can remember being in 5th grade and asking my math teacher, “why do we need to know how to do it this way then?” after he explained that while there was an easier way to solve the problem we were doing, the PSSAs wanted us to complete the problem using this new technique. These same types of situations came up year after year in English class, science, and even history and social studies so we could practice our “response” skills.

As a scrawny 11 year-old, I didn’t truly understand the reason for the test, only that we were told to “get a good night’s sleep” that week, all of the fun posters in each of the classrooms were either taken down or covered up, and we received small cartons of juice and a greasy, pre-packaged muffin before heading to the testing rooms. But as we grew up, we got curious and soon found out that our scores determined the funding for the school that year; the better we did the more money we received. This became blatantly obvious when I was in 7th grade and our principal came into Honors English 7 and gave us all a speech on how “he believed in us” and that “we could make our school proud” by doing our very best on the upcoming test. As it turns out, the previous year had not gone as well as the administration had hoped and were trying everything they could to increase our funding for the upcoming year. 

Almost every sentence in the two paragraphs above is a major red flag for our education system. Teaching to the test? Practicing our “response” skills? “Making our school proud” by what, getting more answers right than wrong?  Even though I could just blame it on my school in particular, this is a state-wide issue. Rather than truly teaching us the skills we need to perform well on the test, teachers are being strongly encouraged to simply teach students to be good test-takers. This is leaving us underprepared for the true world and lacking certain skills and knowledge that we need to be able to successfully contribute to society. Students learn how to determine what is the “right” answer quickly instead of learning how to think through the issue. And this behavior is only rewarded. My school had a pizza and ice cream party for anyone who received an “advanced” score on their PSSAs, even though all we had really done was learn how to answer how we were “supposed” to. We learned how to quickly memorize the information we needed for that week and then immediately forget it in order to make room for the next one. 

In 2004, Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) led a series of studies on the Issues with the PSSAs and their recommendations on how to go about addressing some of them. Five main questions were addressed:

1. Does the PSSA adequately measure the academic content specified by the State Standards contained in Chapter 4? 
2. Are the PSSA tests internally consistent and replicable?
3. Does the PSSA produce results that support decisions required by Chapter 4 regulations? These include a determination of whether a student has demonstrated proficiency in meeting State academic standards in reading, writing, and mathematics; the award of a State certificate of proficiency or distinction; etc. 
4. Do the scores produced by PSSA correlate positively and significantly with pertinent scores produced on related tests such as Terra Nova, Stanford Achievement Test, etc.? 
5. Were the methodologies used to determine performance levels (cut scores) reasonable and technically competent? 

In their findings, HumRRO essentially called out each individually problem with the test, mentioning problems with discrimination, degree of difficulty, and academic standards. Their recommendations are as follows:

• A closer examination of testing materials and the degree of difficulty within each task, multiple-choice or performance based (essay/short answer)
• Possible action if not every academic standard was tested 
• Taking a closer look at whether or not the scores of a student accurately reflect them
• Re-examining the relationships of certain companies and how they affect the test
• Continuing to hold scorers accountable with a reliable system. 

If you are interested in reading the entire report, click here.

All of this essentially means that students and parents are in the right to believe that the PSSA’s and other tests alike are not fair, equal, or by any means an accurate evaluation of their child’s intelligence level or ability to do well in school or the outside world. Albert Einstein was one of the first people to accurately describe the American Education system with this quote: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend the rest of its life thinking it’s stupid.”  The PSSAs teach middle school children that they are only worth the number they get back, and those with higher scores are those who will be successful.this is drastic on such an impressionable mind and had been proven to shape a student’s self-worth and image of themselves from as young as 5th grade. Educators spend so much time and energy on these tests that are only damaging to student’s mental state and confidence, teaching to the material on the test rather than teaching students how to learn, how to be engaged, and how to educate themselves on something that interests them. Instead, kids are learning that higher scores mean that you are worth more time, more energy and more effort. Even though we have addressed the possible benefits of the SAT, it is truly difficult to find any with the PSSA. Hopefully, these tests can either be improved or eradicated for future students and their ability to learn rather than memorize.

Resources 

https://thetartan.org/2013/4/15/forum/pssa

https://www.stateboard.education.pa.gov/Documents/Research%20Reports%20and%20Studies/PSSAIssues.pdf