PA test scores are on the rise after pandemic lows. How did Centre County stack up?

After years of data gaps and pandemic lows, standardized test scores across Pennsylvania are once again on the rise — but students are not out of the woods yet in Centre County.

Results from spring 2023 showed drops in both math and reading scores for students nationwide, but some states’ scores had rebounded by the fall, though not to pre-pandemic levels. Statewide scores are slowly increasing after a two-year decline — English proficiency rates increased by .4% and math by 2.6%.

PA Future Ready Scores were released in the fall, and in the months since, districts have presented the data to boards as they prepare to submit plans for how to address shortcomings. The scores give districts the chance to look back on how students are progressing in the wake of COVID-19. Danielle Yoder, assistant superintendent of elementary education for State College Area School District, said during a Dec. 4 board meeting that, although controversial, the PSSA and Keystone data are important for educators and administrators.

“We have started to have more conversations around the PSSA data because this is how we are judged in the state of Pennsylvania, whether we like it or not,” Yoder said. “Every child in Pennsylvania is expected to take this assessment.”

How do the tests work?

Each year students in grades 3-8 take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams in math and English, with fourth and eighth graders taking additional exams in science. PSSA exam results, alongside high schools’ Keystone exams, are used to track year-to-year growth as part of the Pennsylvania Value System of School Assessments.

All these state assessments, alongside student and school demographic data, are compiled into the PA Future Ready Index, an online database to show the school’s test results, proficiency, attendance and graduation rates. The database was launched in 2018 as a way to provide a more comprehensive approach to school progress.

Christine Merritt, curriculum director for SCASD, said during the December board meeting that the database helps to provide a comprehensive and transparent look at statewide testing data.

“It’s a holistic kind of tool to look at the district in lots of different ways,” Merritt said. “It provides a comparison to statewide averages, which is really nice to look at, by displaying school performance, statewide average and statewide goal.”

Information from the PA Future Ready Index also helps calculate Act 13 Building Level scores. As part of a law targeting educator effectiveness, building level scores use academic achievement, growth and attendance and are adjusted based on the number of economically disadvantaged students. Scores are on a 100-point scale and help factor into state educator evaluations.

In Centre County schools, the scores range from a high of 88.8 at State College Area High School to a low of 65.3 at Bellefonte and Bald Eagle area high schools.

PA Future Ready Scores aren’t just used to evaluate schools as a whole on a statewide level, they’re also used by local educators as a part of annual evaluations, Penns Valley superintendent Brian Griffith said.

“All of our instructional administrators and most of our teachers are held accountable for these performance indicators as part of our annual evaluations,” Griffith wrote in an email to the CDT.

Data patterns

Similar to past years, math and reading continue to lag behind science scores for schools across Centre County. In 2021-2022, only two of the 30 public schools in the county met or exceeded the statewide goal for English/language arts; in 2022-2023, only State High met the goal.

That doesn’t mean every other school in the county is failing. All but four were above the state average and met interim, but not long-term state goals for English. And although achievement may be lagging, growth is on the rise. Fifteen schools met the benchmark for English growth in 2021-22 but 22 met growth goals in 2022-23. For math assessments, eight met growth benchmarks in 2021-2022 compared to 11 in 2022-23.

The gap between yearly subjects and science is shrinking too. Last year, all but seven Centre County schools met or exceeded the state benchmark for science growth and nearly half for achievement. This year, 20 of the 30 schools met growth targets while 13 met achievement standards.

How schools use data

Although data sets can be helpful to see how certain schools or grades perform in subjects, it’s not the only way of measuring student achievement or progress. Educators look at school climate, student emotional/social well-being, curriculum and test scores to determine achievement and growth.

Although helpful for comprehensive curriculum changes, finalized results released from the PA Future Ready Index don’t directly impact teachers daily instruction.

“The data that they’re getting is kids they had maybe several years ago,” Merritt said. “So this isn’t helpful instructionally per se to know how to adjust my instruction tomorrow. ... It’s helpful in looking at our curriculum.”

Standardized exams like PSSA and Keystones can help schools adjust their curriculum and institute additional support systems to ensure students are meeting statewide goals. Where math was a concern after the 2022 results, literacy is a major curriculum focus for the upcoming year with only one school in the county, State High, meeting the state’s long-term English goals.

Kris Vancas, assistant superintendent of Bellefonte Area School District, said the district is working on English and language arts through its multi-tiered system of support, which is a school improvement framework consisting of layers of targeted interventions for students who are struggling with any academic, behavioral or social-emotional issues.

“As part of this focus, a Secondary ELA committee is reviewing and rewriting the curriculum in grades 6-12,” Vancas wrote in an email to the CDT. “This includes the development and or refinement of common assessments.”

Penns Valley is also targeting literacy and reading scores through its professional development and educators. Centre Hall Elementary, Penns Valley Elementary/Intermediate and Penns Valley High School all exceeded state growth standards for English/language arts.

“We are training our teachers in research base literacy instruction at both the elementary and secondary levels,” Griffith wrote in an email.

Despite districts’ focus on literacy, nearly all Centre County schools are well above the state average in English by several points and 15 out of 30 were above the state average for students in advanced English. Merritt said that SCASD is still looking at improving its scores for next year.

“Overall, in reading though, we’re looking at about 20% — anywhere from 15 to 20% — higher than the state average within our scores for reading in grades three through eight,” Merritt said.

Problems with data sets

Despite nearly four years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, its effects on the education system still loom large, especially in the data. Both attendance and graduation rates are from the 2021-2022 years, rather than 2022-2023. Yoder said both categories are lagging indicators that will be updated in the spring once the 2023 cohort graduates.

“It’s actually from the year that we just had students back from COVID but it is really looking at the number of students enrolled in the district for 90 or more days but have missed more than 10% of the school days,” Yoder said.

Another hidden problem within the data sets is opt-out rates and the inability to desegregate data. Many students across the state can have their data points incorporated into another school or building within their district. This can happen when multiple schools, such as elementary and middle schools, are housed within the same building and share a building code that the PA Department of Education uses to group scores.

For example, this year Miles Township’s fourth-grade class was moved to Penns Valley Elementary and Intermediate School, making any growth scores for Miles Township unavailable.

This grouping of scores is one of the main reasons for the State College Area administration’s push for the Delta Program to become its school. Standardized testing scores and opt-out rates for students in the Delta Program are sent back to the student’s “home school,” or where they would have gone had they not chosen Delta. Administrators argue that Delta not having separate data for Keystone, PSSA and PVAAS does a disservice to both the Delta students as well as the other middle and high schools as it makes seeing the specific data trends for each school more difficult.

Opt-out rates also affect scores and data availability, as groups with less than 20 students testing are unable to provide accurate data to show in PA Future Ready. Schools with higher than 5% opt-out rates must also submit plans to the PA Department of Education on how to improve testing rates. As of 2022, Delta Program opt-out rates have not caused other schools to submit improvement plans. In recent years, the only SCASD school to submit a plan was State High for English Language Learners.

Opt-out rates and waivers from 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 have continued to affect Keystone Algebra scores for high schools. As students can take algebra anytime from 8th grade to 11th grade, Keystone banks those scores until a cohort reaches 8th grade, meaning this year’s results contain limited data as students within the cohort may have opted out or had their exam waived if they took algebra from 2020-2021. Merritt said nearly 40% of the Algebra cohort across the state had waivers exempting them from the exams due to COVID.

“We just have to remember low participation rate yields results that are not representative of the whole group performance,” Merritt said.

Going forward

In the upcoming weeks districts will continue to update and submit their Future Ready Comprehensive Plans to improve for next year and meet with teachers, principals and support staff to adjust curriculum and instruction to help target areas like literacy.

Districts will get an early look at 2023-2024 data in June but full reports on student achievement and growth won’t be publicly available until fall when the next round of PA Future Ready Scores come out.

“We just keep stressing, this is one piece of data,” Yoder said. “...This is not judging you. But we are looking at the schools to say how can we get better and we want all schools to be making, hitting those targets, to make sure that everybody is getting an equal education.”