What’s One Less PSSA?
Annetta Yuwono (11-4)
How the absence of PSSAs affected high school admissions and what to look out for this year
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Last Spring marked the Pennsylvania System of State Assessment (PSSA)’s first cancelation since its introduction in 1992. This provoked a range of mixed feelings among students, teachers, and administration.
PSSA scores, specifically scores from third and seventh graders, have been considered during admission into Masterman middle and high school for years. Ms. Elana Solomon, who, as a middle school dean, worked on admissions with previous principal Marjorie Neff, explained, “For all special admission schools, anyone with an 88 percentile and above qualified for admission and ethen we dwindled it down from there.” With one year of missing test scores, schools had to resort to other means of assessment. The new Masterman admissions team (which Ms Elana is not on) decided to consider sixth grade PSSA scores for the 2020-2021 high school admissions cycle.
At first, many current eighth graders were relieved when Governor Tom Wolf declared that PSSAs would be canceled. “They always cause me tons of stress,” wrote Marisa Maisano (8-3), “I was glad to get rid of one stressful thing during this already stressful time.” Yet beneath that sense of security lied hints of uncertainty. “I was kind of relieved, but worried about high school applications,” Sopbhie Jermann (8-6) detailed. Maisano explained, “I was upset that they were looking at things that we did from when we were 10-11 years old, since we have changed academically [since then].” Other eighth graders concurred. Rory Gonzales (8-4) wrote, “my friends and I discussed how it was unfair to use our 6th grade PSSAs. We were never warned to take it very seriously, and we looked at it more as a practice for our 7th grade one.”
This sudden switch benefited some and disadvantaged others. Gabrielle Ketchum (8-4) wrote, “It definitely made other PSSAs that we took more important and therefore affected heavily which high schools accepted you.” Valeria Schuster (8-6) explained, “It did make me nervous because I did not get the score I was hoping for in [6th grade], but I was able to get into the places I wanted to go.”
With changes to test scores coupled with Masterman’s movement towards a more diverse student body, “interviews and zip codes were put into the mix,” explained Ms. Elana. During Masterman’s 2020-21 highschool admissions cycle, students from outside the Masterman middle school were admitted. “To my knowledge, taking students into the 9th grade from outside of the school has not happened in quite some time,” explained Ms. Elana.
Opinions about the test scores themselves also vary among the staff. “I do not like these state mandated tests. I don’t like teachers teaching to the test. It is an utter waste of time and it is not indicative of where the child is at in terms of the learning process,” Ms. Elana stated. That sentiment is echoed by many students: “The PSSAs… make you judge your self worth based on a number you get, and comparing that number to other people,” Maisano wrote.
Nevertheless, teachers agreed that the government’s decision to cancel the PSSAs last year was a good one. Some were “glad to see it go.” One seventh grade teacher from the school district of Cheltenham, Mrs. Desa Lee, explained, “[the] PSSA usually has a negative connotation among the students because it's a time of stress… It was a good decision on the part of the state because given the whole reality of Covid, it just made sense not to administer the test.” Overall, most Masterman eighth graders and teachers were relieved; they agreed that the cancelation of PSSAs was a good choice.
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Up until mid-February 2021, Pennsylvania school districts were faced with the question regarding PSSA testing.
As the end of the school year nears, the Phila School District is still completely virtual for students in grades 3-12. With PSSA season just around the corner, the
situation regarding this year’s test is still unresolved. According to Ms. Elana, the government and local principal’s union (CASA) clashed this year on this topic. The union wrote a letter to President Biden and Pennsylvania’s senators, but the government is adamant about preserving its “tradition” this year. President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, reacted to the Department of Education’s announcement saying, “it is a frustrating turn to see the administration ask states to continue requiring assessments during this tumultuous school year… it misses a huge opportunity to really help our students by [using] locally developed, authentic assessments that could be used as a baseline for work this summer and next year.”
In a recent Department of Education update, Ian Rosenbaum, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, explained, “at a time when everything in our education system is different, there need to be different ways that states can administer state tests like moving them to the fall so that precious in-person learning time this year can be spent on instruction.” In light of the pandemic, the Department of Education has suggested three changes: extending the testing window and moving assessments to the summer or fall, giving the assessment remotely, where feasible, and shortening the state assessment, to make testing more feasible to implement and prioritize in-person learning time.
Maisano and others were also concerned about the integrity of the test if it were to be administered online. “If the board of education had continued with PSSAs,” Maisano explained, “there would have been issues regarding academic integrity and that the scores could have been skewed, ultimately hurting the people who decided to be honest with their [test].” Ms. Elana agreed saying, “How are you going to monitor the test? I don’t see how it could work online, I don't see how it would be a valuable assessment of anybody.”
Ms. Elana spoke firmly about the injustice of having students take tests with no recognized purpose. “I don't even think students understand the purpose of it.” Later, she questioned her seventh grade advisory about the PSSAs during one Zoom conversation. “What do you think [the] point of the PSSA is going to be for you this year?” Ms. Elana asked her class. After a couple of seconds silence, one brave student answered, “I don't know.” Ms. Elana then shared with me, “isn’t that the saddest point… take a test that you don't even know why you're taking it.”
“The fact that most people still got accepted to schools [this year],” Maisano wrote, “[it] might have the school district rethink if the PSSAs are really necessary.”
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