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District reviews PSSA results after first year of online testing; Firefly pilot to inform fall plans
Summary
After administering this year's PSSAs online, Oxford Area School District is analyzing student results and piloting the state's Firefly tool to align future assessment calendars; administrators cautioned that statewide percentages are not yet available and that scores may be suppressed in this first online year.
Oxford Area School District administrators told the board on June 16 they are still sorting individual PSSA results from the district’s first year of fully online state testing and will use a Firefly pilot to help decide fall assessment practice.
"We just recently received the individual student scores this week and we are sorting through those to determine how they line up with previous scores," Assistant Superintendent Dr. Billings Jones said. She added that the state has not released official statewide percentages yet.
District leaders explained they piloted Firefly in at least one building (Nottingham) to practice online tools and—separately—run a benchmark assessment. The goal is to correlate Firefly results with PSSA outcomes to determine whether Firefly can replace some benchmark testing and reduce extra in‑class assessment time.
Dr. Billings Jones cautioned that the shift to online testing often suppresses achievement measurements in the first year: "We anticipate because we experienced in the past that when we move to online that our achievement levels will go down." The district said it will report official comparative percentages this fall when state data are available.
Board members also noted a short state testing outage on the first day that briefly interrupted testing; vendors and the district worked to resolve the issue and testing proceeded without ongoing problems.
Why it matters: assessment results inform curriculum adjustments, intervention services and resource allocation. The district plans to present correlations between Firefly and PSSA scores to building principals before deciding how to incorporate Firefly in the 2026–27 assessment calendar.
