New PSSA results show some scores are rebounding, but kids are still behind

After plummeting during the pandemic, the latest Pennsylvania standardized test scores show signs of progress: Year over year, math scores are up.

But the results of the Pennsylvania System of Standardized Assessment (PSSA) administered to third through eighth graders also reveal the persistent impact of the disruption to schools over the past few years. Overall English scores haven’t improved, and even in math, scores remain below 2019 levels.

Experts said gaps from remote learning are still affecting student performance.

“Learning is cumulative — skills that kids are learning now build off skills that kids have learned in the past,” said Laura Pendergast, a Temple University associate education professor. “We should expect gains to come back slowly.”

Here’s what the results released earlier this month show, including how area schools fared:

The share of students scoring proficient or better on the math PSSAs jumped to 39.4% this year, up from 34.4% last year. Pre-pandemic, the share of students proficient or better on those tests hovered around 42% for several years.

Similarly, science PSSA results improved to 65.5% scoring proficient or better, up from 62.2% last year and in line with the average proficiency results over the three years before the pandemic.

Jonathan Supovitz, professor of leadership and policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, called fourth-grade math scores a “bright spot” — with student proficiency rising to 46.5% this year from 42.5% last year, returning to pre-pandemic levels.

But some other grade levels have not similarly recovered. Eighth graders, for instance, rose to 26.1% proficient or better in math, compared to 22.6% last year, but haven’t returned to the proficiency levels — between 31% and 32% — seen in the years leading up to the pandemic.

The fact that only 26% of eighth graders are proficient in math is “particularly worrisome,” Supovitz said.

Unlike math, however, English scores haven’t similarly rebounded. While third graders made some gains, overall English scores declined slightly, from 54.6% proficient last year, to 53.7% this year.

Mary Jean Tecce DeCarlo, a clinical professor at the Drexel University School of Education, said the drop in scores since the pandemic is no surprise — especially for younger students who may have missed out on foundational lessons during virtual learning.

DeCarlo, who supervises student teachers, primarily in Philadelphia, recalled one teacher who had a class of 33 students during the 2020-21 school year, but only ever saw 10 on Zoom.

“I don’t know how much actual time they were in class,” DeCarlo said. She also noted that phonics instruction is harder online — “you need to hear kids read out loud” — and that teaching writing may have been a particular challenge.

“If you have to spend too much time thinking about the mechanics of writing,” you can’t devote as much to the other skills writing requires — from phonics to critical thinking, said DeCarlo, who is hoping to see a breakdown of writing scores from the English tests.

Education leaders are grappling with how to address the gaps in literacy skills, DeCarlo said, looking at how to take strategies traditionally employed to help individual students and apply them to groups. Some literacy professionals are questioning whether curriculum should be retaught, though “there isn’t a lot of research” around that, DeCarlo said.

“The short answer is, we’re not sure,” she said.

At Lingelbach Elementary in Germantown, where state Education Secretary Khalid Mumin visited classrooms and spoke to students Tuesday, English scores are up — a boost the school’s principal attributed to the science of reading.

“We’re consistent, every single day, every adult in the building — support staff, teachers, specialist teachers,” said principal Lisa Waddell of the school’s embrace of the movement, which focuses on systemic, explicit reading instruction, including an emphasis on phonics.

The school’s third graders moved from 26% to 71% proficient on English assessments over three years; the entire school jumped from 31% to 39% passing English assessments.

Across Philadelphia public schools this year, English scores dropped slightly, to 34.1% proficient from 34.4% last year, while math scores climbed to 20.7% proficient, up from 16.5% last year. (Most Philadelphia students are still scoring at below basic, the lowest level, in math, though the percentage of students doing so dropped to 56.8% from 61.7%. In reading, the number of students scoring below basic moved to 26.4% from 28.2%.)

Changing how Lingelbach teaches reading has been transformative, Waddell said, but she still sees the effects of the pandemic. Students now in fourth and fifth grade are soaring because they’ve had three consistent years of science-of-reading instruction.

But Lingelbach is a typical Philadelphia school that has a fair amount of mobility. Waddell had eight new sixth graders enroll in the school this year — all of whom came in reading at below basic. Many students enrolling now have big gaps; they were either simply not attending school or attending cyber school, and there’s a long way to go to bring them up to speed, Waddell said.

“We know that one assessment doesn’t simply define your success or your trajectory,” Mumin said. But, he said, growth in scores shows what happens when resources meet the right conditions, including strong leadership and strong teaching.

School officials say they’re in the middle of a dual recovery: not just from the pandemic, but from inadequate funding.

“You can’t expect a cancer patient that has not gotten his medicine for many years, after three or four injections to be just fine,” said Stephen Rodriguez, superintendent of the Pottstown School District.

A Commonwealth Court judge ruled earlier this year that Pennsylvania’s school funding system is unconstitutional, depriving poorer districts in particular of the resources needed to adequately educate students. While Pennsylvania has yet to act on the ruling, the state has for years been steering additional funding to needier districts, like Pottstown.

Rodriguez said the investment so far is paying off, with Pottstown able to pay teachers and administrators more — stemming the loss of educators to more affluent districts. He hopes that “something as simple as having all the same principals and assistant principals the second year in a row” will improve outcomes at Pottstown Middle School, where the district typically sees achievement drop.

While Pottstown’s elementary schools saw mixed results — one, for instance, saw English proficiency drop by 7 percentage points this year, while another had proficiency rise by 8 percentage points — Rodriguez said he’s more interested in student growth than achievement results.

“When you’ve had such a grossly inequitable system in place for 20 years, I’m not worried about this year’s scores,” Rodriguez said.

In a different measure of pandemic recovery, the number of students taking the PSSA English and math tests topped 700,000 for the first time since 2019.

That’s still down about 5% from pre-pandemic years, however. Supovitz said that “could be due to a number of factors, including an increase in the number of parents choosing non-public school options, including religious schools or homeschooling.”