HARRISBURG (AP) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced on Thursday that his administration will shift all standardized school assessment tests to the internet in order to free up more class time for teaching, create a user-friendly exam for students, and lessen the burden on teachers and administrators.
During a news conference at Northgate Middle School just outside Pittsburgh, Shapiro stated that approximately one-third of Pennsylvania schools currently offer the tests online and that, by 2026, all schools will be mandated to conduct the tests online, rather than using pencil-and-paper.
Students will be able to finish the tests more quickly, resulting in an average time savings of 30 minutes per test. Teachers and administrators will no longer have to handle the tasks of receiving, preparing, administering, packaging, and returning test booklets.
This change will lead to “less testing and more learning” in schools, according to Shapiro. He expressed a desire to eliminate the federally required standardized tests entirely, but doing so would mean forfeiting $600 million in federal aid.
In the spring, students in grades 3-8 take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, while students in grades 9-12 take the Keystone end-of-course tests.
Shapiro indicated that the online testing will be more interactive and better suited to how students learn. It will incorporate methods like drag-and-drop and sorting and ranking, which are skills that students practice in school and on their own.
According to Shapiro, such questions take students less time to answer compared to the multiple choice and essay questions that are commonly found in pencil-and-paper tests.
