Many students at Bradford, Smethport and Otto-Eldred area school districts are among the smartest in Pennsylvania, having have scored above the state average in some of the standardized testing this year.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education released this week statewide and school-level results of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment and Keystone Exams.
“Our results are mixed. Our Keystone exams continue to be above the state average,” Bradford Area School District Superintendent Katharine Pude said.
For the district’s PSSA scores, some grade levels performed at or above the state average, while others performed below the state average.
“Overall, the state averages on the PSSA are low,” Pude said. “I believe, in part, that this is due to the complexity of the PA Core assessments that were just instituted in 2015, as well as the instructional shifts that need to occur across the Commonwealth, with teachers taught in a more traditional manner.”
For the most part, students in Otto-Eldred district scored the same as the state averages, Superintendent Matthew Splain said. In some areas, students scored above average and others below, he said.
“Over the last year, we have maintained a focus on improving students’ abilities to think critically, work collaboratively and also self-guide their own learning,” he said. “We use the scores as a measuring stick for our success, but it is only one measure. Our focus is not developing good test-takers; however, we do expect our scores to improve as a byproduct of our efforts.”
Improvements are always ongoing, and school officials will keep on pursuing improvements depending on what is best for students, Splain said.
In Smethport, Superintendent Dave London said, “We were pleased to see some areas of improvement in our PSSA scores. Our third and fourth grades have made steady improvements in (English language arts) and math. These grades have increased the percentage of proficient plus advanced students in each of the last three years.”
Eighth-grade PSSA math scores have seen steady improvements, London said.
Meanwhile, the Keystone Exam scores are at or above the state average, with Algebra I scores being roughly 10 percentage points above the state average.
Overall, across the state, PSSA scores in English language arts and mathematics saw slight increases over last year, with consistent jumps in English language arts for each of the last three years among third-grade scores across the subgroups.
London said the PSSA and Keystone testing programs are just one measure of a student’s success.
“I am encouraged to know that the state is backing off the testing program and looking for other ways to measure the success of our students,” he said. “We will also continue to advocate for fair educational funding for rural Pennsylvania schools so that our students have the same opportunities as others throughout the Commonwealth.”
