Pennsylvania students will soon take standardized tests online rather than with a paper and pencil, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Thursday.
Standing among rows of books in the Northgate Middle School library, Mr. Shapiro announced the change, which will start in 2026, in an effort to reduce the amount of time students spend taking Pennsylvania’s Keystone Exams and the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSAs, each year. Officials with the Pennsylvania Department of Education are also creating a new benchmarking tool that will help students master necessary skills before being tested.
“We know that students today do a ton of interactive learning on their computers, and online assessments actually do a better job of matching how they learn,” Mr. Shapiro said. “Online testing also means that students who need accommodations on tests can get the help they need without being called out in front of their peers.”
According to Mr. Shapiro, moving the exams online will result in a reduction in the amount of time students need to spend on standardized testing by about 30 minutes per test because students will be able to move through interactive questions faster rather than being bogged down by essay and multiple choice questions. For students taking multiple tests on several subjects, the move will save between 90 minutes and two hours.
The idea will also save teachers, who are responsible for boxing up paper tests and sending them back to the state, necessary classroom time.
In Pennsylvania, PSSA tests, given each April, began in 1992. They are taken by students in grades three through eight to assess English language arts and math. Keystone Exams started in 2012 as graduation requirements. The tests, focusing on Algebra I, literature and biology, replaced the 11th grade science PSSA.
The assessments are in response to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires every state to measure performance in reading, math and science. The 2015 bill replaced the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which coupled standardized test scores with high-stakes decisions such as funding.
But the tests, which have roiled education discussions for years, have once again gained attention after states across the country, including Pennsylvania, saw test scores plummet after the COVID-19 pandemic. And, last year, some Pennsylvania lawmakers proposed shifting the focus to benchmark testing as districts grapple with low standardized test scores, raising questions about the testing system and whether it’s giving baseline representations of where students stand in English language arts, math and science.
“I’d love to go a step further and get rid of these tests entirely, but the problem is if we do that the federal government will literally dock us $600 million in pay. … We can’t afford to take that much money out of the system by doing away with standardized tests while the federal government still requires it,” Mr. Shapiro said. “But we are working with our federal partners to see what we can do to ease the requirements on states.”
The proposal also comes as nearly 32% of districts across the state already administer the tests online, including Northgate. The district, which teaches 1,100 students from Avalon and Bellevue, first moved middle and high schoolers online two years ago as they faced similar challenges such as time spent on tests, Superintendent Caroline Johns said. She also noted that students already do most of their other work online.
“We decided it made all the sense,” Chris Caton, Northgate’s director of curriculum and assessment, said. “We fight with boxes and shipping things back and forth, and this moved us away from that. We were already one-to-one in terms of Chromebooks. We felt our infrastructure was strong enough to handle it and we jumped forward and it worked out lovely.”
Northgate junior Carrie Wynn, 17, added that the change initially “made me quite nervous” after years of taking the test with paper and pencil. But when she took the online version, Carrie said it “felt familiar. Now that much of my schoolwork is done on a Chromebook it felt no different from doing normal homework.”
Once the tests are fully online, Mr. Shapiro said state officials will begin adding technology enhanced questions to the exams to better match how students learn. That means questions could be answered through different methods such as drag and drop, sorting and ranking answers. In addition to reducing time focused on standardized tests, Mr. Shapiro added that the online version will allow teachers to receive results faster. The state, which currently spends millions of dollars on the testing, could also see some savings from the move.
Officials will use the next year to roll out the new format.
That timeline, Mr. Shapiro said, will allow state officials time and resources “to make sure every district across Pennsylvania can participate and no student is going to be inhibited by this process or held behind by this process if they don’t have the resources in their home or in their district. So we’re going to make sure that that is addressed so that PDE has resources, they have people and they have time to make sure this is done in a fair and equitable manner.”
At the same time, state education officials are also creating the new benchmark tool that will be built specifically for Pennsylvania and the state’s standardized tests. The tool will allow teachers to assess how well students are mastering certain skills and materials before they take the test.
Both ideas were applauded by Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education Khalid N. Mumin said.
“We do take a minimalized approach to statewide testing and we only administer the number of assessments required by federal law,” Mr. Mumin said. “I can tell you even by taking the minimalist approach, we are spending too much time on these fill-in bubble sheets in regards to testing. This is time spent by our educators, our students, and they’re already stressed and overworked.”
The announcement, which was attended by some Northgate school directors and several state officials such as Sens. Jay Costa, Lindsey Williams and Wayne Fontana along with state Rep. Emily Kinkead, was well received by many attendees.
“This is a real important change as we go forward in the way we administer the testing. … I’m sure the teachers and the students will appreciate a simpler, online way of the test,” Mr. Fontana said.
Mr. Caton added that any time there’s a change “there’s going to be some trepidation from districts that haven’t sort of stuck their toe in the water yet, but it’s really going to come down to support. PDE sounds like they are ready to support this rollout and I think districts have to move forward without fear knowing that it’s really going to reduce the burden of the paper and the boxes and all of that mess that we fight with every single year.”
First Published: April 18, 2024, 6:37 p.m.
Updated: April 19, 2024, 4:59 p.m.
