Every student has to take PSSAs during his or her junior year of high school, but what some students don’t know is that, sometime soon, the younger classes will have to begin the transition from PSSAs to Keystone State Testing. However, because of significant state budget cuts, the Keystone testing could be pushed back further.
The big difference between PSSAs and Keystone State Testing is that you currently only take the PSSAs once in the four years of high school before graduating. Keystone State Testing is meant to be taken after every major year-long course in which a student enrolls.
The Keystone State Testing is administered in such a way that, if a student fails a section of one of the tests, he or she will have to retake the test the following year. If the student fails again, he or she will have to complete a project that is graded by the committee from the Keystone State Testing program. The disadvantage such a project poses is that instructors will not be able to adequately assist students with the assignment because it is not representative of their own classroom expectations.
In some methods of implementation, students who take the Keystone State Test do not have to take final exams at the end of the year because the Keystone Test counts as a final exam in most classes. Eventually, students will also no longer be required to take PSSAs.
Critics point out that the Keystone Exams are manipulating the age at which students are presented certain material, so teachers are reorganizing the rate at which they teach the essential material so that students can learn as much as they can before testing. In this transitory period, some middle school students and high school students are studying the same material; some high schoolers may even have to start learning college-level material.
Many fear that these tests may have a deleterious effect on graduation protocols. But even the state recognizes that, at least for the moment, these exams are testing the system as much as they are testing the students themselves.
The Tiger Times 
Edgar
April 22, 2011
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Mark McElwee
April 18, 2011
Tiger Times continues to present well-written and interesting articles even to someone who only knows the school b/c we drove through town a lot while our daughter attended Ktown U.
This is an important one. I spent 33 yrs. as a teacher and it’s unfortunate that we aren’t trusted to be the determinators of our students’ progress and accomplishments. I taught film, short story writing, public speaking, science fiction lit, sports lit. None of those were tested. My students, the school board, and the school board all thought that these were valuable courses. Former students from 10 yrs. ago remember more about how to critique a film than they do about all the ins and outs of traditional Shakespeare studies. I’m glad I’m not all caught up in that whole PSSA/Keystone process anymore.
Keep up the good work. Somebody’s doing well teaching journalism out there!