| Department of Education Releases 2021-22 Assessment Results On 11/28/22, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) released the results from the 2021-2022 school year administration of state-level assessments including the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA), the Pennsylvania Alternate System of Assessment (PASA), and Keystone Exams. The results show that the scores are not yet at pre-pandemic levels, however, they are improving in some areas. The scores on the 2022 PSSA’s English tests taken by third through sixth graders are still low, but the scores for seventh and eighth graders showed improvement. The scores for math PSSA’s are improving, but they are still below the level of the 2019 scores. The following are PSSA proficient or above scores for English for 2019 vs. 2022: Third grade: 2019-61.9% / 2022-52.3% Fourth grade: 2019-63.6% / 2022-52.2% Fifth grade: 2019-58.5% / 2022-53.6% Sixth grade: 2019-63% / 2022-56.1% Seventh grade: 2019-60.4% / 2022-57.2% Eighth grade: 2019-55.6% / 2022-57.9% Pennsylvania officials have downplayed the drops in 2021 because they view it as an incomplete picture, and they have yet to comment on the 2022 scores. Testing was canceled in 2020 and brought back in 2021, but significantly fewer students than usual participated. The state also allowed districts to delay the assessments, but many districts decided to hold them in the spring of 2021 while many students were still learning remotely. The pool of students taking the Keystone Exams was also smaller in 2022 compared to 2019. For the Keystone exams, the largest drop in scores was in biology—from 63.2% proficient in 2019 to 41.9% in 2022. The best results were in Algebra which were at 63.3% proficient in 2019 and increased to 63.9% in 2022. What these results don’t show is the dedication of educators working to return their students to pre-pandemic academic levels, and the amazing work teachers and students have achieved since COVID-19 shut-down our schools and forced a new way of teaching and learning that we were not wholly prepared for. | |
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