Pennsylvania school districts will be administering Wave 1 of the new Keystone Exams within the next two weeks, with many local school districts beginning the testing of 11th-graders with the algebra I or biology component today, the first day of the testing period.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Keystone Exams are end-of-course assessments designed to evaluate proficiency in academic content. Beginning with the Class of 2017, students must demonstrate proficiency on the algebra I, literature and biology Keystone Exams to graduate. Students will be offered multiple opportunities to take the Keystones throughout their high school careers.
In the current school year, the Keystones replace the 11th-grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests in mathematics, reading and science for the purposes of satisfying No Child Left Behind/Adequately Yearly Progress requirements. According to PDE, each Keystone test has no time limit for student completion but should take two to three hours.
Local school districts have been preparing for the testing since last year, with extra instruction for students being offered this school year.
At the Shenandoah Valley School District, testing of 11th-graders in biology will be held today, according to Superintendent Stanley G. Rakowsky. He said an in-service for teachers was held Nov. 21 by district testing counselor Val Chittalia to address issues in preparing students for the Keystone Wave 1 11th-grade biology testing today and Wave 2 for algebra I scheduled for Jan. 9 to 23.
At that session, teachers were instructed on the administration of the Keystone Exams and their importance to the district, specifically dealing with an overview of how the tests are accountable for annual yearly progress, reviewed PDE test security protocol to include teachers and administration to introduce specific development of district policy for cheating, reviewed roles and responsibilities of district school/district assessment coordinator, reviewed roles and responsibilities of the test administrator, reviewed common violations of test administration along with specific PDE contact information for reporting suspected violations, and reviewed planning and scheduling.
"Currently, PDE has not developed specific sanctions affecting the Class of 2017 if proficiency is not achieved," Rakowsky said. "However, recognizing the need for SV students to achieve their full potential, I decided not to wait on PDE. Rather, I established an ad hoc committee to review and develop plans specific to the school district based on the anticipated graduation requirements."
The ad hoc committee met Thursday for more than an hour in Rakowsky's office to discuss the overall Keystone Exams implementation beginning this year and moving toward 2017. In addition to Rakowsky and Chitallia, the other committee members attending were high school Principal Philip Andras, high school guidance counselor Melissa Kayes, English teacher Tiffany Barbutti, mathematics teacher Linda Hixon, biology teacher Jeff Maksimik and social studies teacher Tom Lauta. Also attending the meeting were district Business Manager Anthony Demalis and elementary school guidance counselor Michele Baranowski.
"This is going to be for the betterment of the school and we're going to get people involved," Rakowsky said. "Leading the ship will be Principal Phil Andras. This is not a top down initiative. It will be an initiative made up of people who are part of this. It's not going to be a success otherwise."
Tamaqua Area High School Principal Stephen Toth said the algebra I test will be given today as part of the first wave of testing.
"Our preparation was to use the software that we purchased called 'Study Island,' which goes along with the Keystone Exams and is a benchmark indicator to give us a baseline and find out where are students are," Toth said. "Then we tried to positively affect instruction inside of our classrooms using that data generated from that software. We look to see where we might need some more improvement and line up our instruction in those areas."
Toth said the district is working to have the curriculum meet the standards that are set by the commonwealth. The bulk of students at Tamaqua Area take algebra I in ninth grade, so they have a two-year gap from their course and the testing, and there is a small group of advanced mathematics students who took the course in eighth grade.
"We allotted time to instructing our juniors using our Study Island software," Toth said. "What we have tried to do is refresh memories and use our computer software to align instruction with what they are doing in the classroom."
Toth said about 140 to 150 students will take the algebra test today.
"We have a group of students who took the pre-test two years ago and scored either advanced or proficient at that time and are not required to take the test in this first wave," Toth said.
The Williams Valley School District will administer the algebra I test Wednesday and the biology test Thursday. This first window of Keystone Exams testing is from today to Dec. 14. The literature test will be taken by all 11th-graders during the May testing window.
Superintendent Donald Burkhardt said the literature test will be toward the end of this school year because it fits in with the 11th-grade curriculum.
"The language parts can fall in any of the first three years to match up with the state test and we made the decision that our junior English course matches up with it best, so we won't be taken the English Keystone until the end of the year because it will mesh with our junior year English," Burkhardt said.
In preparation for the testing, Burkhardt said there have been meetings with the math, science and English departments. As for students, there has been additional instruction for the algebra and biology testing this week.
"We held extra courses during this year to supplement instruction because in the case of the biology and algebra Keystones, those 11th-grade students haven't had those courses since their freshman year," Burkhardt said.
Burkhardt said that the Keystone Exams are planned to be administered to students who are completing that particular course at the end of a school year.
"That's what those tests are designed for and not designed as a stand-alone test like they're being done this year," Burkhardt said. "They're designed as an end-of-the-year test of how the students performed in that year. When the state went from the PSSAs to the Keystones, they didn't plan on testing the juniors this year at all since they knew most of the schools gave these courses in the freshman or sophomore years. However, they had asked for a waiver from the federal government for AYP, and the federal government said no."
With the waiver request denied, the commonwealth had to begin the testing this year.
Burkhardt said supplemental courses have been given to 11th grade students as refreshers.
"Biology and algebra teachers taught these courses throughout the fall during the activity periods at the end of the day," he said. "Our bio teachers also have a packet on the website for the students to study online."
He said the district is also using the Keystone portion of the Study Island program.
North Schuylkill School District Superintendent Andrew D. Smarkanic said the school district is ready for this new testing mandate from the state. The first test will be today with algebra I for the 11th-graders.
"Dennis Kergick, who is our director of curriculum, and high school Principal Christian Temchatin have done a tremendous job on preparing for the exams on the student side and the teacher side," Smarkanic said. "We knew these were coming. We had some of our teachers over the summer being involved in the process, going down to the Department of Education to help write some of the curriculum for the Keystone. I think our district is very well prepared for it."
Assistant high school Principal Margaret Manofsky said the preparations began last year.
"Basically, last year we started looking at the 'Common Core Standards' and gave all the materials to our teachers," Manofsky said. "We talked to them about the Keystones and the different ways to train in what was going to be implemented. I gave them a Common Core checklist so they could look at their curriculum and adjust it accordingly."
The Common Core Standards are aligned with expectations for success in college and the workplace. The Keystone Exams are designed to measure those standards.
As with other superintendents, Smarkanic has some concern about an algebra I test being given to students who took the course from two to three years ago.
"Our concern is that when the test results come back, how are the individuals (at PDE) going to interpret the test results," Smarkanic said. "Are they going to say that is result of the retention of kids who took algebra two or three years prior? They have gone through geometry, pre-calculus, calculus and a lot of other things. They use the same principals but are they going to retain the basics of those algebra concepts?"
"They're (PDE) basically saying that if we teach it at levels three and four, then students should be able to take the exam and process it because the students use it for other math courses, but they have a deeper knowledge," Manofsky said. "The depth of knowledge is the whole key, too. This is basically changing the way how we teach and what we require of our students. I think as we transform with that, we will see a change with the Keystones, too, and get better results."