PSSA - Grade 4 reading/English language arts test scores by proficiency level in Pennsylvania
Why This Indicator Matters
PSSA - Grade 4 reading/English language arts test scores by proficiency level
Definitions:
The percent of fourth grade students who took the reading PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment) test for each district, charter school or technical school grouped by proficiency level.
Beginning 2012-13, PSSA tests were administered to only grades 3 - 8. Scores are not available for 2013-14.
In 2014-15, there were changes to the reading, writing and math PSSAs to
reflect that these tests are now aligned to the Pennsylvania Common
Core Standards. As a result of this alignment, the separate writing
PSSAs in grades 5 and 8 were eliminated and students in grades 3-8
instead took an English Language Arts PSSA that includes both reading
and writing. Implementing the stronger academic standards and measuring
how well students are doing on the more challenging PSSA tests resulted
in an initial decline in test scores when they were released. This drop
in scores was not unexpected and should not be interpreted as a decline
in student learning or teacher performance. It simply means Pennsylvania
is recalibrating expectations and raising the bar for student
achievement to ensure our kids are on a pathway to graduate from high
school post-secondary and workforce ready.
Data Source:
Pennsylvania Department of Education, Assessment and Accountability
Footnotes:
LNE = Low Number Event. Statistics (rates, ratios, percents) are not calculated and displayed for counts less than 10 (or less than 3 for Bayesian/Nearest Neighbor rates).
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, statewide PSSA & Keystone assessments were cancelled for the 2019-2020 school year. For the 2020-2021 school year, Pennsylvania, like many states across the nation, afforded school entities the option to administer assessments at any time between the traditional spring window and the following fall to allow for flexibility as schools navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, the test results will not be used for educator evaluations and the variability in testing periods, sharply reduced student participation rates, and other factors make comparisons between school entities and across school years improper. Given these circumstances, the results should not be viewed as a complete, representative sample of all students in the commonwealth and will not be available.