PSSAs are all about testing and nothing about learning

The exams are a waste of time for everyone but the academic bean counters.

By Arielle Emmett

Call it the vise grip of politics, the triumph of academic bean counting, or even a perfectly fair standardized achievement test. Whatever you call it, the Pennsylvania State System of Assessment (PSSA) exam once again is inspiring heated debate throughout the region. In fact, some people are downright mad about it.

As every fifth, eighth and 11th grader slogs through four days worth of PSSA reading and math exams, educators and parents in some districts are railing against the one-shot test the state uses to profile academic performance. "It's the sole measure of how a district's performance is judged," said Elaine Culbertson, director of secondary curriculum in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. "A teacher's relationship with a child is a much richer measure of the progress being made."

The state Department of Education contends the PSSAs produce educational accountability satisfying the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act. This unfunded mandate requires that all students must score proficient or better on standardized math and reading tests by the year 2014.

This is a lofty goal, probably drafted by politicians who never did terribly well on standardized tests. Every student in America must now reach proficiency regardless of intellect, mental or physical handicap, or ability to understand English.

The PSSAs are not about the students. They're designed as a comparative report card on schools. The results are published in newspapers to the glee of real estate agents in high-scoring districts. The students - who bothers to ask them?

The state stratifies the PSSA scores each year into a set of percentages defining whether districts are making "adequate yearly progress." This means that each district must increase its test scores yearly to meet No Child Left Behind's 100 percent proficiency benchmark. If not, the schools face the threat of government restructuring, staff firings, or takeover, according to educators.

This is what makes people angry. The state identifies a district for improvement after it fails to make its adequate yearly progress targets for two consecutive years. But as Wallingford-Swarthmore's Culbertson remarks, "A district that scores high but plateaus after several years can be placed on a warning list, even though the school is excellent, and different kids are tested each year."

Moreover, 17 percent of Pennsylvania students taking the PSSAs are in special education, according to the state Department of Education. Their achievement level is defined as a minimum of two years behind the so-called norm. Districts with many special-ed students, as well as first-time English speakers, no doubt are at a testing disadvantage.

Who benefits from the PSSAs? Kids who score poorly don't always get extra help. (Some state tutoring money may become available, though.) Districts with sterling performances don't get financial rewards. Instead, the scores appear as yet another set of numbers on student transcripts. (The scores are removable, at the parents' request.) While PSSA data could be valuable, no one has developed tools to assess or integrate the findings into a cogent or individualized learning "plan."

What students do get from the PSSAs is more time off from the classroom. Students get less time to learn, ask questions, seek answers, or chart a horizon much bigger than the political one in Harrisburg.

As a parent and teacher, I ask myself: How would Socrates do on a PSSA - assuming he understood enough English to take the exam? He'd probably laugh and let the test drop to the floor.

"Are you adding to students' knowledge and confidence?" he'd ask the PSSA authors. "Or, are you satisfying the sophists and oligarchs in power?"

Through dialogue, Socrates would reveal the PSSAs to be nothing more than the tool of academic bean counters. "Let's have music, gymnastics, reading and math," he would say. "No PSSAs!" Excited, his best students would rise up, chasing the bean counters away.