Sunday News (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) March 15, 2009

HEADLINE:  Stressed Out; Students, Teachers And Parents Feel It As They Are About To Be Tested By the State's Measuring Stick for Schools – The Pssas Reputations On Line Unhappy Vibe Pssa Hype

By Suzanne Cassidy

Darlene Taylor said she looked at her calendar recently, saw that March 16 was approaching, and, "It was like, oh, here we go ..."

March madness - of the academic kind - is on its way.

Beginning this week, Pennsylvania students in grades three through eight, as well as grade 11, will be immersed in Pennsylvania System of School Assessment testing, usually referred to simply as the PSSAs. For roughly seven hours, students will be filling in bubbles on strictly guarded, carefully administered, standardized tests.

Students in grades five, eight and 11 took the writing PSSA last month. A science PSSA will be given to students in grades four, eight and 11 next month.

In March, however, it's all about reading and math assessments, the main event on the testing schedule. These are the tests that weigh heavily in determining whether a school has made Adequate Yearly Progress (or AYP, in the alphabet soup of educational jargon).

These are the tests for which schools have been preparing for months. They've drilled and prepped students; they've offered tutoring sessions and practice tests.

These are the tests that have loomed before them all year. These are the tests that, according to educators, parents and students alike, seem to transform usually cheerful, lively schools into somber, anxious places, in the hours while testing lasts.

Nearly all students - whether they speak English fluently, whether they have learning challenges - take the PSSAs. There is an alternate test, known as the PASA, but it's taken by a mere fraction of students with significant cognitive disabilities.

At many elementary schools, teachers try to lighten the mood with snacks and fun activities after each day's testing concludes, but even so, PSSA season itself has become a test - of endurance and mental fortitude.

A "real anxiety-driven, difficult cloud" can come over a school, especially if that school didn't fare well in the previous year's testing, said Jane Bray, dean of the School of Education at Millersville University.

Bray said it's become clear that the PSSA testing is "very overwhelming for everyone. ... We hang every hat in the house on this test."

She said she worries "about the culture that is created at these times. ... So much is riding on this. It's high-stakes testing, as they say."

The reason PSSAs are such a serious business is simple: School districts know that their reputations - and ultimately, their hold on their students, their funding, and even their own schools - depend on students' performance on the tests. When former President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law in 2002, he was seeking to ensure that schools would be held accountable if they failed to ensure the success of all of their students.

The educators interviewed for this article were unanimous in their approval of that goal.

Brenda Becker, superintendent of the Hempfield School District, said accountability was missing for too many years in public education. No Child Left Behind, she said, forced "all of us to take a look at each and every child" who was falling through the cracks.

Gina Scala, professor of special education and rehabilitation at East Stroudsburg University, said No Child Left Behind was "almost like one of those things that you knew it was going to fail, but it had to happen to push people. If we didn't have No Child Left Behind, kids with special needs would be back in the dust."

Said Bray of Millersville: "We all hate No Child Left Behind, but in fact, No Child Left Behind is the push that moved everybody into the realm of, 'Hey, you just can't float out there on your own - you have to be accountable.'"

So, the accountability component has been given a superior grade. It's just the execution of No Child Left Behind - and the resulting emphasis on one-size-fits-all tests, such as Pennsylvania's own PSSAs - that has educators and parents dissatisfied.

"We put all our eggs in one basket and say this determines whether you're doing well or not," Scala said. "There's nowhere in our life where a reasonable person would use one measure as a determination of success."

Don Stewart, superintendent of the Penn Manor School District, acknowledged in an e-mail that "many students and most teachers feel an elevated level of pressure because of high-stakes testing." But he was reluctant to characterize the students' stress.

"We test about 2,200 kids and I think I have some who worry and fret in every testing environment," he wrote. "I am afraid I also have some who 'blow it off' because they know it may not affect them directly."

Becker, of Hempfield, said that while elementary students may get anxious about the PSSA testing, it can be difficult to get secondary students to take it seriously.

"We worry more about the PSATs," said Kayte Demanche, a junior at Conestoga Valley High School, who said high school students tend to see the PSSA as a test of their school's reputation, not their own.
And a few high school students have been known to intentionally mess with their PSSAs - making artistic patterns of their answers, for instance. Conestoga Valley and other schools now require students who don't meet proficiency standards to take remedial classes.

Sydney Musser won't be taking the PSSAs this year because she's now a freshman at Elizabethtown Area High School. But she remembers taking it as an eighth-grader last year. "The vibe in school during PSSA week was not happy," she said.

Pam Stoner, a parent in the Hempfield School District, will see her third child through PSSAs this month. "In the beginning, with my first child, it was a really big deal," she said. "There's a message that the kids get of the importance of [the PSSAs], because it's basically how the school gets graded. It would stress my oldest out quite a bit."

Then, she said, "We finally decided it wasn't something to be stressed out about." And now, Stoner said, her youngest child doesn't seem at all worried about the tests. "She's more mellow - and we're more mellow about things for sure."

Still, Stoner said she has observed how the school climate changes during PSSA season. "It's a much more serious environment. It's quieter for one thing. ... There's just kind of a different vibe. It's kind of weird, actually."

It's not just PSSA testing days, some say, but the weeks leading up to them when teachers and school administrators seem more on edge. "You can tell there's more of a tense atmosphere," Lancaster parent Darlene Taylor said.

Taylor is the mom of twins who are in the seventh grade at Lincoln Middle School in the School District of Lancaster. She's a very involved mom, who chairs not only the parent advisory council at her kids' school, but the parent advisory council for the entire district.

Some kids worry because they're aware of the labels that will be affixed to their performance - advanced, proficient, basic, below basic, Taylor said. "The label thing is so in, whether it be clothes, shoes, cell phones, where you live. ... I just think that puts a lot of pressure on these kids."

She thinks most of the pressure, however, is felt by teachers. Her heart goes out to them, she said, noting, "I always feel like I need to throw them a party."

"The teachers are under pressure, the administrators are under pressure, which puts the kids under pressure," Taylor said.

Becker, of Hempfield, said she does see teachers getting concerned about the testing, "because even though we don't use PSSA results to evaluate teachers, they feel it's an indictment on their performance."
Teachers are losing "an enormous amount of instructional time" because of PSSA preparation and the administration of the tests, Becker said.

And now, the state is sending people into the schools to monitor "how you're dealing with test security and test administration," the superintendent said, noting, "It has very much a 'Big Brother' air to it."

She understands the need to protect the integrity of these high-stakes tests, she said, but "it just keeps adding more and more layers of time and anxiety."

The whole exercise, she said, "doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel like a natural part of assessing what children are able to do."

Professor Scala of East Stroudsburg said she takes issue with the "the hype of the PSSAs" - and she cites, in particular, the letters many schools send out this time of year. Generally, the letters exhort parents to make sure their kids get a good breakfast and get plenty of rest during PSSA testing.

Scala, whose own kids have been through PSSA testing, is not impressed by the timing of these parent letters.
"There's such a flurry of activity around this test that I feel, as a parent, my God, why aren't you this concerned all year?" Scala said, adding, "Do you think I'm not giving my kid breakfast other times of the year?"
"I understand schools are doing it because they need to make sure the kids take these things seriously," she said.
But, she said, "I tell my kids, this is a very important test, but it is equally as important as that spelling test you took last Friday and that social studies test you're going to take next week. Not, 'Oh my God, this is the PSSA.' "

Bray, of Millersville, said she strongly believes that "the culture and the environment for the testing" is determined by classroom teachers and the principal in charge of each school building.

If a teacher is "so uptight about the testing," and nervous about making sure her students are prepared, "the students are going to pick up on this," Bray said, noting that students "take their cues from the adults, and so the teachers can either create that nervous situation or help to ease it. They will never be able to eliminate it."

It would help if the grownups could temper the pressure a little bit, she said, noting that she's heard parents say their children have felt sick with worry, or couldn't sleep because of the PSSAs. She encourages parents to talk to their kids, so they can defuse any anxieties that are being imparted at school.

Bray said she understands why schools send those PSSA letters home, but the last thing she wants is for a parent to be worriedly "shoving a bowl of cereal" in front of a child, who is reluctant to eat breakfast. "It creates a difficult situation, it creates that fear, that nervousness, that anxiety," she said.

Research shows that kids do learn better if they have a good night's sleep and a nutritious breakfast, and so reminding parents of this is a perfectly valid thing to do, Bray said.

But she and Scala said they'd prefer that schools give parents this message at, say, the beginning of the school year - and then reinforce it throughout the year.

"Don't just give it to me three weeks before the [PSSA] test and make me get crazy over it," Scala said.

Scala recalled the excitement her youngest daughter felt about the prospect of going into a year when she wouldn't be taking the PSSA. "She said, 'I'm going to learn this year! This isn't a PSSA year!' I thought, 'Oh, man. ...' "

Lancaster mom Darlene Taylor said she would be relieved when PSSA season drew to a close. "When it's over," she said, "I usually try to take my kids out to eat, to show that hey, you're doing a good job - keep it up."