How do parents know how students performed on the PSSA and who decides on what is Proficent?

Parents are sent a report called the The Pennsylvania Parent Report. The student’s results are on the report. The first page shows the average score which is 1300 for both Mathematics and Reading. The report shows your child’s score for each subject and where the score will fall in the performance categories. (Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced). There are two things to be aware of on this page.

First, student scores are shown in the thousands. The reason for this is not that there are hundreds of questions on the PSSA, but that the Raw scores, which are the amount the student actually had correct (ex. 33 out of 72) are converted to scaled scores so that the statistics used to check the test have more meaning. The average score for the PSSA is arbitrarily set at 1300. (DRC Tech Report 4, 6, 7)

Second, the 4 levels of performance that can be seen on the Parental Report are: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. These items are called Performance Level Descriptors (PLD) because they describe the level that students is supposedly performing at as measured by this test.

The PLD are decided upon by a committee of teachers which review the Pennsylvania Academic Standards and decide, based on consensus, the definitions of the different PLD. The State Board of Education has the final approval. (DRC Tech Report 4, 6, 7)

Once approved, the PLD are used by a panel of teachers and educators to aid in the process of deciding which questions can be answered by a Below Basic student, Basic student, Proficient student, and an Advanced Student. The PSSA test questions are presented to the panel from easiest to hardest. The panel is asked to decide where the cut off point is between each PLD. This process takes several rounds of discussion and consensus and is further validated using statistical information. Once decided upon, the cut off points between the descriptors are presented to the State Board of Education for final approval. (DRC Tech Report 4, 6, 7)

Once again this is a subjective process made as objective as possible. However, it stands to reason that if a student is on the borderline of any level, then the score could have actually gone to either performance level depending on subjectivity in scoring, performance on the given day, etc. (Well, at least in my humble opinion.)

On the second and third pages, Mathematics and Reading are broken down into smaller categories. An unscaled score (a score that is based on actual points instead of adjusted into the 1000’s) for each category is listed. For example, out of 20 possible points in the category of Numbers and Operations, 12 points were received. However, there is neither a listing of the types of problems that a student answered incorrectly, (open ended versus multiple choice) nor examples of problem types for each category. The website listed to assist parents in helping there children “grow” educationally is http://www.pagrow.com/. This website shows some more basic information and has links to pertinent areas of the Department of Education website that show some sample problems and how the tests are scored. However, once again, its usefulness is limited in actually helping parents to help their children perform better on the PSSA test.

All school district scores are posted on the Pennsylvania Department of Education website. http://www.pde.state.pa.us/.