Rep. Angel Cruz is calling for major change to how Pennsylvania students are evaluated.

Cruz, D-Philadelphia, wants to do away with the Keystone Exams in favor of localized assessments, similar to the requirements in Virginia and New Hampshire. House Bill 2473 has been referred to the House Education Committee.

Cruz proposes the state Board of Education consult with local school boards to develop a county assessment of student performance that will then be used to evaluate students — though neither that local measure nor the Keystone Exams would be a requirement to graduate.

“In 2019, former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale called for replacing the Keystone Exams with a test that is ‘statistically proven to help students realize their potential for higher education, careers or other callings.'”

Cruz wrote in his legislative memorandum. “We have made great strides in Pennsylvania with the passage of Act 6 of 2017 and Act 158 of 2018, which established alternative pathways for meeting statewide graduation requirements. It is time that Pennsylvania builds on this progress by establishing a measurement of student performance that assesses academic proficiency while recognizing the differences in student needs across the commonwealth.”

Act 158 of 2018 (Act 158) provides alternatives to Pennsylvania’s statewide requirement of attaining proficiency on the three end-of-course Keystone Exams (Algebra I, Literature, and Biology) for a student to achieve statewide graduation requirements.

Starting this year, students have the option to demonstrate postsecondary preparedness through one of four additional pathways that more illustrate college, career, and community readiness while the Keystone Exams continue as the statewide assessment Pennsylvania uses to comply with accountability requirements set forth in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Act 6 of 2017, meanwhile, created alternative pathways to graduation for students in career and technical education.

New Hampshire created the PACE (Performance Assessment of Competency Education) system to decrease the number of tests students had to take. In each grade and subject, one common complex performance task, the PACE Common Task, is collaboratively developed and administered by all participating schools and districts. The PACE common tasks are designed to serve as calibration tools, providing evidence about the comparability of judgments related to student achievement across New Hampshire PACE schools and districts. Comparability means that if a student is deemed proficient in one district, that same student would also be deemed proficient in another school district.

The statewide assessments are administered in the grades and subjects when student performance will be most useful for informing programs and auditing the innovative assessment system third grade English language arts, fourth grade math, fourth grade math, eighth grade English language arts and math, and 11th grade English language arts, math and high school science.

Cruz envisions a similar system under House Bill 2473.

“My legislation would do just that — by requiring the state Board of Education to work with the governing boards of each school entity to develop county-wide assessments to be administered in place of the statewide standardized tests,” Cruz wrote. “The legislation would also eliminate the required passage of assessments in order to graduate. By developing academic proficiency tests at the county level, teachers can use assessment results to better tailor instruction to fit real-world demands and help students build higher-level skills and processes like creative and analytical thinking, experimental inquiry and literacy, decision making, and persuasive oral communication.”