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The Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) exam was conducted over a five-day period between March 7 and March 14 to all Allderdice juniors. The PSSA’s are monitoring tests used to gauge student proficiency in reading, writing, and math. As a result of the No Child Left Behind Act, each state must set up procedures to ensure that students have acquired certain skills in math and reading. The PSSA results, which up until No Child Left Behind were used as a way for schools to assess themselves, have now become “the grade a school receives.” To make sure schools are making progress in achieving standards, targets known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) are set by the state. Schools that fail to meet their AYP targets face penalties. Last year, Allderdice reached all of the 17 AYP targets except minority proficiency in Math. This year’s AYP for the entire student body is 54% proficiency for reading and 45% proficiency for math. “There’s so much emphasis on it because if you don’t pass it this year it will just be a hassle for next year,” said Melissa Friez, an alternative education teacher who serves as the school’s testing co-coordinator. Last year, in an attempt to improve PSSA test results, principal Cassandra Richardson Kemp introduced a program called Each One Reach One Teach One. The program assigns a faculty member to be a personal academic mentor to each student who tested non-proficient in the Tera Nova exam, a test taken by every student as a freshman in order to gauge their proficiency in reading and math preparation for the PSSA. “There were very few complaints,” said Friez, who is also the Each One Reach One Teach One coordinator. “Teachers were able to connect to students.” Finally, the eleventh grade class attended a PSSA pep-rally last month in the auditorium. “The assembly was called to make sure that students had all the information needed,” said Friez.
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A symbol for this year’s tests. |
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PSSA Scores Improve |
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By: Ben Gordon |
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The Allderdice Foreword An Award Wining Publication |