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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | April 3, 2017 03:41 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Daniel Laughlin |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Adjusting Pennsylvania’s PSSA timeline |
| In the near future, I plan to introduce legislation that would improve Pennsylvania’s timeline for conducting the PSSA exams and ensure that educators receive results in a timely fashion. This week, students in every public school in the commonwealth begin taking their PSSA exams. The timing for exams is driven by the commonwealth’s contract with the test vendor – not in the best interest of the students. To me, it makes no sense to have federally-required standardized testing performed when there is still more than two months of school left in a school year. Teachers literally have to stop instruction. Students stop learning. I’ve heard from teachers and parents about how stressful these weeks are and the pressure that is put on students to be ready and to perform. Everything in schools are basically paused during three weeks of PSSA testing. Teachers find it difficult to motivate students to put forth the effort and refocus on other classroom curriculum for the remainder of the school year. Because so much of students’ school year is devoted to test preparation, they recognize they’re essentially done after PSSA's . Working together we can easily solve this problem. My bill would require that PSSA testing begin no later than the third week prior to Memorial Day. This gives teachers more time to devote to their curriculum and helps them have the peace of mind to know they don’t need to rush through content areas. It also helps students by giving them more time to learn prior to federally-required standardized testing and aligning with the traditional school calendar. My bill would also require that chief school administrators receive their students’ scores on the PSSA exam no later than August 15th. This ensures they have the performance information prior to the start of the school year. They can work with teachers to adjust instruction and examine professional development opportunities to more clearly align with educator and student needs. Please join me in co-sponsoring this common sense piece of legislation. Thank you for your consideration. |