PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Frequently Asked Questions:
Introducing the Assessment Anchors
What are 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. We used the metaphor of an “anchor” because we wanted to signal that the Assessment Anchors would anchor both the state assessment system and the curriculum/instructional practices in schools.
Why do we need Assessment Anchors if we already have the Pennsylvania standards?
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. The Assessment Anchors target a specific band of standards, enabling the PSSA to have a higher level of clarity.
Do the Assessment Anchors replace the Pennsylvania standards?
No. The Assessment Anchors do not replace the standards. All teachers are still required to teach to all of the standards per Chapter 4 Regulations and use local assessments to measure student progress. The Anchors simply clarify which standards are assessed on the PSSA.
Will teachers teach only the Assessment Anchors and ignore other knowledge and skills?
The Assessment Anchors were written with the intent of having interdisciplinary discussions about how the Mathematics and Reading Anchors can be taught in Science, Social Studies, the Arts and other content areas. The intent of the Anchors is not to narrow the curriculum, but to focus teachers on the essential skills and knowledge in Reading and Mathematics that must be taught across the curriculum, given the limited amount of time teachers have with students.
How were the Assessment Anchors selected, and by whom?
The Department of Education identified the Assessment Anchors based on the recommendations of teachers serving on the Mathematics 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 for input. We had seven criteria in mind with the development of the Anchors. We wanted the Assessment Anchors to be:
Ø Clear. We wanted to clarify which standards are assessed on the PSSA. The Anchors should be easy to read and user-friendly.
Ø 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.
Ø Aligned. The focus is on helping students achieve the state’s standards. The Anchors align directly to the state’s standards in Reading and Mathematics. The Anchors simply clarify the standards.
Ø 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.
Ø Organized to support a curricular flow. Rather than simply identifying Anchors in the grades for which the state has standards, we developed Assessment Anchors in Grades 3 through 8 and 11 to encourage a curricular spiral that builds each year to the next.
Ø 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.
Ø 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.
How are the Assessment Anchors organized?
The Anchors are only available in Mathematics and Reading in Grades 3 through 8 and 11. In the document you will find the following:
Ø Reporting Category. The Anchors are organized by Reporting Category. The Reporting Category appears at the very top of each page. There are five Reporting Categories in Mathematics and two Reporting Categories in Reading. Reporting Categories are important because individual student scores will be reported at this level. District and school reports may include reports by Assessment Anchor if there are enough questions on the PSSA to warrant a valid score by the broad Anchor statement.
Ø Assessment Anchor. The Assessment Anchor appears in the shaded bar across the top of the page. You read the Anchor like an outline with the main concept shaded in gray. Just beneath, in the left-hand column, are more specific descriptors that can be used for instructional purposes. Both the concept in the shaded gray area and the descriptors (which appear one per page) are part of the Anchor.
Ø References. Below each specific descriptor of the Assessment Anchor is a reference in italics. This reference relates to the PA Academic Standards and helps you cross-walk the Anchors to the Standards.
Ø Eligible Content. The column on the right-hand side of the page underneath each Assessment Anchor is the Eligible Content. This is often known as the “assessment limits” and helps teachers identify how deeply they need to cover an Anchor and/or the range of the content they should teach to best prepare their students for the PSSA. Not all of the Eligible Content is assessed on the PSSA, but it shows the range of knowledge from which we design the test.
Ø Sample Items. The sample items for Mathematics appear on the bottom half of the page. These are examples of how the Assessment Anchor might appear on the PSSA. Some of the pages may not have any sample items because we only created three per Assessment Anchor. Teachers should see the Item Bank and the Item Sampler for sample items. There are no sample items for Reading included in the Assessment Anchor document.
How can teachers, schools and districts use the Assessment Anchors?
The Assessment Anchors can help focus teaching and learning because they are clear and manageable – and closely aligned to the PSSA. Teachers and Administrators will be better informed about which standards will be assessed on state tests. The Assessment Anchors should be used in combination with the Assessment Handbooks that include the test blueprints and Released Tasks from the PSSA. With this degree of information, teachers can more easily embed these skills and knowledge in the larger curriculum. For example, reading for inference is a skill that all students at any level need to learn and practice. Staff can share the responsibility for teaching this skill in English, as well as other areas in the curriculum. Even elective and support staff can “adopt” an Assessment Anchor. In this way, an entire school and community can teach and reinforce these critical Reading and Mathematics standards.
What is the difference between the Assessment Anchors and "anchor papers"?
Anchor papers are not the same as the Assessment Anchors. In order to score open-ended items on the PSSA, PA teachers read a sampling of the student responses on the open-ended items and try to identify responses or "papers" that exemplify the different score points on the rubric. These responses are called "anchor papers." They are called anchor papers because they "anchor" the scoring process. Once teachers reach consensus on the anchor papers, they are used by trained teachers to score all of the open-ended responses on the PSSA. When the Department releases open-ended items with student work, the anchor papers are often released with the items.
