Pittsburgh Public Schools: 31.2% of first-time Keystone Biology takers proficient in 2024; district lays out three-part plan

Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Wayne Walters told the district's education committee on Feb. 19, 2025, that 31.2% of students taking the Keystone Biology Exam for the first time were proficient in 2024, short of the district's 32.8% target for the 2024'25 school year and well below the five-year goal of 41.5% by 2027. Walters framed the results as a call to accelerate work on curriculum, teacher professional learning and attendance interventions.

Walters said the district is concentrating on first-time test takers because the biology Keystone is one of three state Keystone exams required for graduation. "It is important to focus on students taking the Keystone Biology Exam for the first time," he said, noting students may retake the exam through the end of 11th grade but that follow-on science courses often do not reinforce biology content.

The numbers Walters presented show steady cohort-to-cohort improvement from a 2021 baseline of 24% proficient to 31.2% in 2024. He underscored wide disparities by subgroup: white students were reported at 57.3% proficiency (11.4 percentage-point growth since 2021); English-language learners at 39.9% (7.8-point growth); economically disadvantaged students at 19.2% (5.5-point growth); African American students at 12.6% (6.9-point growth); and students with individualized education programs (IEPs) at 6% (2.4-point growth).

Walters and his team flagged chronic absenteeism as a major factor linked with lower proficiency. Using Classroom Diagnostic Tool (CDT) data, Walters illustrated that regular attenders outperform chronically absent students across subgroups. "When you miss school, you miss out," he said, summarizing the pattern he described. The district also reported lower high-school CDT completion rates (mostly in the low 70s to low 80s) than typical elementary rates (upper 80s to 90s), a problem the superintendent said has been elevated to high-school principals.

On interim measures, Walters described CDT results from two administrations this school year: after the first CDT administration, 16.6% of first-time test takers were at or above grade level and about 5.2% were on track to reach Keystone proficiency; after the second administration those figures rose to 24.5% at or above grade level and about 12.1% likely to reach proficiency if tested then. Walters cautioned that students had not yet been exposed to the full biology course content at the time of the second CDT administration.

The presentation recapped curriculum and instructional changes underway. Last school year the district adopted the National Geographic Biology instructional materials and the MindTap digital platform; Walters said the adoption includes phenomenon-based lessons, virtual labs and embedded supports but that implementation faced challenges such as late arrival of hands-on materials and uneven expectations for digital-platform use. The superintendent also noted the district is implementing the Pennsylvania Science, Technology, Engineering, Environmental Literacy, and Sustainability (STEELS) standards, adopted by the Pennsylvania State Board of Education in July 2022, and is aligning materials to those standards.

To address the data, Walters laid out three strategies:

- Strategy 1: Curriculum-based professional learning. The district will deliver a cohesive series of virtual professional learning opportunities for the 19 high-school biology teachers and use a March 7, 2025, professional-learning half-day for lab preparation. The science supervisor will conduct weekly classroom walkthroughs using an observation tool adapted from WestEd to track fidelity of phenomena-based instruction and lab integration.

- Strategy 2: Standards-aligned resources and intentional practice. The district will perform curriculum mapping to align classroom instruction to eligible content tested on the Keystone exam and use Pennsylvania Department of Education released items as formative practice, warm-ups and constructed-response practice to strengthen reasoning and test familiarity.

- Strategy 3: Data-driven instruction and targeted interventions. The district plans data-literacy training, a CDT analysis protocol, creation of small instructional groups for intervention and enrichment, and intervention guides tied to assessment data.

Walters said the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and a district subscription to tutor.com (accessible through district portals) remain available for tutoring, and acknowledged the district has not yet launched broad parent engagement around the new instructional materials. Board members asked about the district's role in addressing chronic absenteeism across schools, social-emotional supports, whether tutoring usage matches need, and how professional learning can be made more relevant and sustaining. Walters said assistant superintendents and principals review chronic-absence dashboards with schools and that the district is working to better communicate the impact of excused and unexcused absences on learning.

Board members also questioned whether differentiation and staffing (for example, paraprofessionals) are sufficiently available in classrooms. Walters emphasized that differentiation ultimately rests on teacher planning informed by data and that the district will continue to build teacher capacity and school leadership supports.

The presentation included a brief explanation of Keystone score banking (highest module scores are retained to compute the proficiency threshold) and a reminder that a COVID-era waiver from the U.S. Department of Education in 2019'20 affected how proficiency was counted in district accountability figures, producing a smaller cohort counted in 2022 and a return toward larger cohorts in subsequent years.

No formal board action or vote was recorded during this session; the meeting was a goal-monitoring presentation and discussion. Walters said the district will continue to report progress in subsequent goal-monitoring conversations and carry out the three strategic responses to improve first-time Keystone Biology outcomes.