A bipartisan group of state lawmakers and Jerry Oleksiak, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), introduced five bills designed to reform state standardized testing policies at a Capitol press conference recently.
Some of the bills are based on a March policy paper from PSEA titled “A Balanced and Research-Based Approach to Standardized Testing.”
“PSEA has recommended solutions to the problems standardized testing causes,” Oleksiak said. “Now, these lawmakers have introduced legislation to make those recommendations into policy, and we’re going to work together to make them law. The goal we all share is to de-emphasize the focus on standardized testing in our schools and ensure that our testing policies make sense for our students and our teachers.”
The bills would require schools to administer the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) three weeks before Memorial Day and provide the results to the chief school administrator no later than Aug. 15. The legislation would also allow school districts to decide whether students must pass the Keystone Exams to graduate and allow parents to opt-out of standardized testing for religious, philosophical or health reasons.
They would also prohibit public schools from purchasing assessments from private vendors designed to predict a student’s ability to succeed on the PSSA or Keystone Exam and would ensure that PSSA and Keystone Exam results can only be used to comply with federal law and growth-score calculations.
“Testing has taken over our public education system; everything in our schools is driven by the need to prepare for federally required state standardized assessments,” State Rep. Jamie Santora (R-Delaware County) said. “We, as policymakers, were so concerned about the impact of high-stakes testing that we delayed the Keystone Exam graduation requirement. It’s time we take another important step.”