PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

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An Introduction to the Reading and Math State Assessment Anchors

Introduction

            Over the past year, the Department of Education has been working hard to create a set of tools designed to help educators improve instructional practices and better understand the Pennsylvania System of Student Assessment (PSSA).  The Assessment Anchors are one of many tools that the Department believes will better align curriculum, instruction and assessment practices throughout the state.  Without this alignment, we will not be able to significantly improve student achievement in the Commonwealth.

Why Assessment Anchors

            Since 1999, the teachers across the Commonwealth have been using a set of state standards to develop curriculum and instructional materials.  Likewise, the Department and teacher committees have been using the standards to develop the state assessments.  Over the last few years, however, teachers have expressed a need for a clearer document, noting that the Pennsylvania standards were often too broad and too many. 

            In an effort to provide greater clarity to the field about the assessment system and to better align the assessments to standards and curriculum, the Department facilitated the development of what we call Assessment Anchors.  The Assessment Anchors clarify the standards assessed on the PSSA and can be used by educators to help prepare their students for the PSSA.  The metaphor is simple: we needed something to hold together or “anchor” both the state assessment system and the curriculum/instructional practices in schools. 

How the Anchors Were Developed

            The Department of Education identified the Assessment Anchors based on the recommendations teachers serving on the Math and Reading Assessment Advisory Committees and other curriculum experts.  We also looked to national organizations (i.e., NCTM, NCTE and NAEP) and other external groups to ensure that the Anchors are: 

• Clear.  We wanted to clarify which standards are assessed on the PSSA. The Anchors should be easy to read and user-friendly.
• Focused.  No state assesses every single standard on its statewide assessments—it would be impossible.  Rather than have teachers “guess” which standards are most critical, the Anchors identify a core set of standards that could reasonably be assessed on a large-scale assessment. 
• Aligned. The focus is still on helping student achieve the state’s standards.  The Anchors align directly to the state’s standards in Reading and Math.  The Anchors simply clarify the standards.
• Grade Appropriate. Teachers may have different ideas about what skills should be mastered by which grade levels.  The Anchors provide clear examples of skills and knowledge that should be learned at the different grade levels that will be assessed on state tests.
• Follow a Curricular Flow.  Rather than simply identifying Anchors in the grades for which the state has standards, we developed Assessment Anchors in grades 3-8 and 11 to encourage a curricular spiral that builds each year to the next.
• Rigorous.  We wanted to maintain the rigor of the state standards through the Anchors.  The state will continue to use performance tasks to assess higher order reasoning and problem solving skills.
• Manageable.  We wanted to identify a set of standards that could be taught in a manageable way before the Spring administration of the PSSA.  We are looking forward to doing additional analysis to see if we have in fact identified a manageable set of expectations from the curricular view.