School districts could have the option to delay Pennsylvania System of State Assessments and Keystone Exams until the fall.

Matthew Stem, Pennsylvania Department of Education deputy secretary, said further guidance from the U.S. Department of Education was just released this week and it included options such as extended testing windows, shortening exams and offering remote administration if possible.

“Extending our testing window through the summer and straight into the first month of next school year would allow for these assessments and exams to be administered without forcing teachers and educators into buildings where they may still be in remote learning,” Stem said Tuesday during a House Education Committee hearing on the impacts of COVID-19 on schools.

Jim Thorpe Area School District Superintendent John Rushefski said there is no doubt there will be concerns with testing data from the 2020-21 school year.

“I don’t know how reliable it’s going to be when you are comparing that data to previous years when we didn’t have to deal with COVID-19. We are going to be dealing with the COVID slide and there is no question about it. I don’t see the point in going forward with something when it’s going to be riddled with questions.”

Rushefski said Jim Thorpe will make a good-faith effort to administer the assessments this spring.

Lehighton Area School District Superintendent Jonathan Cleaver said any time the state allows flexibility, local districts find it beneficial.

“Because our high school has block scheduling, our biology students are actually taking Keystone Exams now because ideally we want them to be taking it right after the course when the information is fresh in their mind,” Cleaver said.

Fully virtual students, Cleaver added, will be coming into the buildings to take both Keystone Exams and PSSA tests, and he said all local districts have been doing the best they can to continue the learning progression throughout the pandemic and prepare students for the assessments.

“We’ve all become more efficient with the virtual component, and our teachers are always self-evaluating themselves and monitoring student progression,” Cleaver said.

While he said teachers welcome the extended testing window, Pennsylvania State Education Association President Rich Askey expressed disappointment that the PSSA and Keystone Exams are taking place at all.

“We are disappointed that the U.S. Department of Education has decided against offering a waiver to standardized testing requirements this year,” Askey said. “As we wrote in a joint letter to our federal elected officials in January, we believe that if we truly want schools and educators to focus on learning recovery, we shouldn’t be administering standardized tests at all this year. Our students have already lost too much classroom instructional time.”

Academic regression

A regression in student academic success, increased charter school costs and teacher shortages were several of the concerns heard Tuesday by state legislators during the hearing.

“We prefer to see Pennsylvania’s schools open for full in-person learning,” said Rep. Curt Sonney, chairman of the committee. “A study from the Center for Disease Control last month found little evidence of the virus spreading at schools when precautions are taken. Difficulties of remote learning and being isolated from other peers are having an impact on the mental health and academic success of students. Some students, however, have excelled in virtual learning and teachers have stepped up to the plate.”

Committee members asked for statistics from the fall of 2020 in order to gauge how student grades compare to the pre-COVID-19 era.

Stem said PDE doesn’t historically collect local assessment data.

“We do know based on national and international trends that the greatest academic impact during COVID-19 has come for those with special learning needs and younger students,” Stem said.

Many districts across the country have reported increased failure rates since the outset of the pandemic.

“We need to deal with the reality that many students will be left behind,” said Mark Spengler, a learning support teacher at Emmaus High School. “In our district, we’re looking at extended school year services and expanding the amount of students taking part in that. We have offered regression services and that goes back to last March. Students have also been given tutoring opportunities after school.”

It isn’t all bad news, however, state officials said, and the idea is coming into focus that remote learning is going to, at least in part, be around for good.

“We’re hearing that a number of students prefer distance learning and are actually excelling,” Stem said. “We are re-imagining what learning could look like with some of these flexibilities in instructional models that did not previously exist.”

Teacher shortage

As districts try to ensure students are getting the best education they can under the circumstances, many are dealing with more and more teachers thinking about calling it a career. Stem said PDE does have anecdotal information that districts are struggling with an increase in retirements.

Art Levinowitz, an Upper Dublin School Board member and the president of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said teacher shortages are a real problem.

“I don’t think it’s just us,” he said. “The pandemic is making it more pronounced. Securing day-to-day substitutes is also tougher than ever right now.”

According to a Learning Policy Institute Report in 2016, there was a projected teacher shortfall even before the pandemic started of 316,000 teachers annually by 2025.

“Those trends are starting to emerge and we’re looking to mitigate that in the next few years,” said Dr. Sherri Smith, PDE’s director of the Bureau of School Support. “Recruiting and getting more of our folks into the teaching field is something we need to have on our agenda so we can staff our classrooms.”

Legislators pushed PDE to continue working with the Department of Health to make teacher and staff vaccinations a priority across the board. Though Sonney said it was unlikely any school would direct employees to get vaccinated, Tuesday’s panelists indicated teachers are eager to get it.

“I think a lot of staff will get vaccinated based on what I’m hearing from colleagues,” Spengler said.

Charter costs

The Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials predicted school district payments to charter schools would increase by nearly $475 million in the 2020-21 school year.

Dr. Jay H. Burkhart, South Western School District superintendent, said cyber tuition in his district has increased $1 million over the course of the last year. That also figures to be the trend locally. Based on current enrollment, Panther Valley School District said it expects charter tuition to be $1.5 million more than it budgeted. Palmerton Area School District has preliminarily budgeted $200,000 more for that expense in 2021-22.