{"id":264963,"date":"2026-08-14T01:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T01:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/264963\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T01:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T01:04:07","slug":"bethlehem-schools-enter-the-new-year-with-falling-literacy-scores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/264963\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethlehem schools enter the new year with falling literacy scores"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than half (46.7 percent<\/a>) of Bethlehem Area School District (BASD) juniors scored at least Proficient on last year\u2019s state Keystone exam for Literature, down almost 20 percentage points from 2018, when 65.5 percent of juniors achieved that passing score. The falling scores have reopened a question that new superintendent Dr. Renato M. Lajara will have to contend with: whether standardized tests are a valuable objective measure of where the district\u2019s students stand, or just a reflection of the hurdles many of them face.<\/p>\n

For School Board President Dr. Michael Faccinetto, state exams like the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) for Language Arts, which is given to grades 3-8, or the Keystone for Literature don\u2019t accurately capture the school\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think [PSSAs] are a waste of time and they\u2019re a waste of money,\u201d Faccinetto said. Before the recent transition to digital testing, the cost to taxpayers for PSSAs was nearly $50 million<\/a> in 2023. \u201cI\u2019m a hundred percent opposed to PSSAs. I think there are ways that we can, across the board, measure student success, teacher effectiveness, [and] student growth and learning, without boiling it down to a standardized test that, you know, three days in April are going to tell us what you know in Language Arts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faccinetto said the district\u2019s high-poverty population \u2013 a fifth of its teenagers live under the poverty line, about 1.3 times the national average<\/a>, and 54.7 percent of its students are \u201ceconomically disadvantaged\u201d<\/a> \u2013 means that student performance often varies dramatically among its over-12,000 K-12 students.<\/p>\n

A better way, according to Faccinetto, is what\u2019s called a competency-based education, wherein teachers use brief assessments, often administered three times a year, to track a student\u2019s growth and identify which students are at risk for literacy difficulties.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you were at Below Basic and you grew to Basic, that\u2019s a lot of growth; that [means] something is working,\u201d Faccinetto said. \u201cSo many kids\u2026 come from various family backgrounds, various levels of education in the community. Not everybody [is] coming in, obviously, at the same level when it comes to literacy and the ability to read, and [we\u2019re] seeing that across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

In last year\u2019s Keystone Literature exams, only 33.2 percent of \u201ceconomically disadvantaged\u201d juniors achieved at least Proficient, more than ten percentage points lower than the general rate. A staggering 36 percent of juniors in that category scored Below Basic, the lowest possible mark, and only 2.9 percent scored Advanced, the highest possible mark.<\/p>\n

According to Max Kraft, an Advanced Placement (AP) World History and German teacher at Freedom High School, some form of standardization is necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere needs to be an objective standard,\u201d Kraft, who noted he\u2019s speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of BASD, said, in reference to the SAT. \u201cIt\u2019s important to have objective ways to measure kids and where they\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a social studies teacher, though, Kraft doesn\u2019t prepare students for a Keystone exam. He said the test holds its weight for the state \u2013 the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in 2015, mandated that every state provide standardized tests to measure performance in reading, math, and science. But students, parents, and colleges, Kraft said, care more about the SAT, ACT, and \u2013 most interesting to him \u2013 an AP test.<\/p>\n

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Freedom offers more than 25 AP courses<\/a>, for subjects that span from U.S. history (which is Kraft\u2019s course) and English literature to biology and computer science.<\/p>\n

The now-ubiquitous courses are designed by the educational nonprofit College Board \u2013 which also produces the SAT \u2013 to emulate the rigor and speed of a college course, and Kraft says that a student can\u2019t pass one without being literate.<\/p>\n

\u201c[AP classes] don\u2019t try to measure literacy,\u201d Kraft said. \u201cThey try to say \u2018how well do you know AP [English Language and Composition]?\u2019 And they make a hard test that you have to be literate to pass. You know, AP World History is not testing kids on literacy, but there\u2019s no way you could learn all that in AP World History without being literate. You\u2019re not going to pass an AP test if you\u2019re not literate.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the year, more than 3 million students nationwide take their AP exams<\/a> and are awarded scores from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. Most colleges offer credit to students who pass \u2013 which typically means receiving a 4 or a 5 \u2013 an exam, depending on the course.<\/p>\n

Kraft said he\u2019s observed that his students who read often pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can tell who\u2019s going to do really well on the exam after week two or three, and they tend to be the one that comes with a book in their hand,\u201d Kraft said. Kraft\u2019s AP World History course is one of the only AP courses offered to Freedom sophomores. \u201cAnd I\u2019m telling you, brother, I\u2019m rarely wrong. Every single kid who\u2019s ever gotten a 5 that I can think of, the highest scorers, they\u2019re all readers. Every single one.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kraft, the AP program is a beacon of light in a troubling sea of inflated grades. According to Christian Curet, an 11th-grade English teacher at Liberty High School, the COVID-19 pandemic created the perfect environment for schools to inflate grades \u201cto make sure that the kids got through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight after COVID, there was a lot of what they were calling grace and compassion; it was a tough time for everyone,\u201d Curet said. \u201cBut then, the next two years, all those standards that we had before that were never really put back into place. A lot of the grading became a lot easier, and that allowed people to basically put in half as much effort to get the same grade that they would before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colleges take into consideration a student\u2019s Grade Point Average (GPA), or their average grade across all of the classes they took, heavily in admissions decisions. Kraft said that means districts and schools are also incentivized to graduate students with rockstar grades, so that the students who want to go to college have a better chance of acceptance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re trying to be the most competitive applicant, you go to an AP class and get the A,\u201d Kraft said. Because GPA at Freedom is weighted, an A in an AP class allows for the chance at a 5.0, rather than the standard 4.0. \u201cThe pressure to get the A is huge for the kids, because they\u2019re so competitive, because they want to go to the university.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kraft, trying to get kids to score a 4 or 5 on an AP exam in May, which colleges also consider up to a student\u2019s junior courses, eliminates the noise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any power to alter that test, so I have to bring kids to that standard,\u201d Kraft said. \u201cThat\u2019s a great example of where\u2026 the relationship hasn\u2019t changed. The AP test doesn\u2019t have to accommodate to where [kids are] at. And I have the ability to \u2013 if the parents are frustrated with a grade for a project or something like that \u2013 say, well listen, I\u2019m trying to prepare your kid for this test, and if you don\u2019t want them prepared then that\u2019s fine, but that test is that test.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past few years, though, the College Board has recalibrated its AP exams, leading to noticeable decreases in fail rates that have drawn criticism<\/a> for jeopardizing the program\u2019s validity. The rate of 1s on AP U.S. History, for example, dropped from 29.8 percent in 2023 to 8.4 percent in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Critics of standardized tests, like an AP exam or a Keystone exam, also argue that passing one doesn\u2019t only take aptitude, but also test-taking ability as well as knowledge of \u2013 according to policy analyst Richard Rothstein \u2013 \u201cthe relatively narrow set of topics that are most heavily represented on the high-stakes tests.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe assessments that we\u2019re given, through Keystones, typically are one of the least effective ways of measuring what the students know,\u201d Curet said. \u201cA lot of students just don\u2019t test well when it comes to multiple-choice questions. The standardized test is not as accurate, but it\u2019s standardized, so it\u2019s a tool that we use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curet added that although English Language Learners \u2013 which represent almost 10 percent of the district\u2019s population \u2013 can be average or even above average with their understanding of the language and grammar, they can still struggle with \u201cthe phrasing of the words and the answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey understand the concepts, they understand the themes,\u201d Curet said. \u201cWhen we talk about those things, they\u2019re right on. It\u2019s almost always the specific phrasing on the test that causes some of the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The questions on a state exam, created and approved by teachers and curriculum directors across Pennsylvania, aim to measure a student\u2019s command of the state\u2019s Common Core Standards. Faccinetto validated Pennsylvania\u2019s Core Standards, and said that the bigger issue was using standardized test scores as a yardstick.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Common Core was a big scary word fifteen years ago, [but] even at the time, Pennsylvania had a very good set of standards, believe it or not,\u201d Faccinetto said. \u201cWe\u2019re a mess at a lot of things, but the PA standards are very good. I don\u2019t think Common Core had a detrimental or negative impact on what we teach in our classrooms, talking about language arts and math. I think the bigger issue is this reliance on standardized testing to judge a school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kraft admitted that the students who take AP classes are \u201cdefinitely more literate to start with\u201d, although he argued that AP classes can push even the students that don\u2019t come in literate to succeed. Regardless, the students who take AP classes are only a subsection of the general student population that\u2019s required to take the state exam.<\/p>\n

Kraft noted a definite \u201closs of the middle\u201d, an observation supported by recent trends in Keystone data. Where 10.1 percent of juniors were at Below Basic, the lowest mark, in 2018\u2019s Keystone for Literature, 24.6 percent were at that mark in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not naive to the fact \u2013 I don\u2019t think the district is \u2013 that some kids are bound to be successful, and we\u2019re preparing them, but they\u2019re going to be prepared with or without us,\u201d Faccinetto said. \u201c[But] what\u2019s the accountability of the district to graduate the students from 12th grade who can maybe only read at an 8th grade level?\u201d<\/p>\n

Faccinetto noted a number of programs that districts can use to instead benchmark students throughout the school year, including IXL, STAR testing, Measures of Academic Progress Growth (MAP) testing, and Lexia. This software, he said, provides \u201cboatloads of data in real time\u201d \u2013 like if a student struggles with contractions or evaluating themes \u2013 that teachers can use to direct their instruction going forward.<\/p>\n

Regular assessments, Faccinetto argued, can help the district fully understand and work with a student in a way end-of-year exams can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cFar more valuable than PSSA, if I pull up a student on a STAR test, I can go into their winter STAR screener, I can see what their overall score was, and then I can see how individual standards align with the state standards, [and] where they struggled,\u201d Faccinetto said. \u201cThis is what teachers do every day; they use that data to group students so they\u2019re giving targeted instruction. It\u2019s far more valuable than a once-a-year PSSA test that takes several months to get results.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, Gov. Josh Shapiro deliberately eased the transition to benchmark testing by beginning the two-year process of moving the PSSA and Keystone exams online<\/a>. Shapiro even said he would get rid of the PSSAs altogether if it didn\u2019t remove access to $600 million in ESSA federal funding.<\/p>\n

A year earlier, Rep. Eric Nelson (R-Westmoreland) and Rep. Martina White (R-Philadelphia) introduced a bill<\/a> that would enable a minimum of three benchmark assessments throughout the school year.<\/p>\n

Faccinetto noted that teachers in high-scoring classrooms are often reluctant to bring their skills to a struggling classroom when their job performance is directly tied to those students\u2019 performance. A wide corpus of research<\/a> also shows that teachers in high-poverty districts are more likely to leave for wealthier districts.<\/p>\n

Alongside his role on the School Board, Faccinetto teaches fifth-grade ELA and Social Studies at Joseph P. Liberati Intermediate School in Bethlehem. His ELA department, he said, is evaluated based on whether or not they\u2019ve achieved a certain growth percentage with their IXL numbers.<\/p>\n

A competency-based education, Faccinetto argued, can take some undue pressure off of teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I am an incredible teacher and I have great data and I\u2019m very confident where I\u2019m working, why do I want to pick up and make the move and bring my skills to a classroom that struggles, in a high-poverty school?\u201d Faccinetto said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s fair to hold teachers accountable to say, well, you\u2019re teaching 5th grade and that student can only read at a 4th grade level. If they came to me at a 2nd grade level, and I grew them two grade levels in a year, that\u2019s pretty good instruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

A school\u2019s reputation can also take a hit when it\u2019s not reporting good data, which has made charter schools, which already receive a portion of public school funds, and private schools enticing alternatives for parents. When strong students are pulled by their parents, Kraft said, that can create a \u201cdownward spiral\u201d that reduces the school\u2019s reported test scores, and ultimately gives students leverage on the district.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the thing, is that it\u2019s a fight,\u201d Kraft said. \u201cIt\u2019s unfair that it\u2019s a fight. Why would we compare? It seems a foolish thing to say that education is going to be this winner-take-all system; that\u2019s not what it\u2019s supposed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although BASD uses benchmark testing already, Faccinetto argued that schools should be assessed entirely based on how successful they are at meeting students where they are, not on where they end up. The state is unlikely, though, to ever remove state exams due to ESSA, a reality Faccinetto admitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cLawmakers like to have a number \u2013 they\u2019re used to having a number \u2013 to say good or bad, pass or fail,\u201d Faccinetto said. \u201cI don\u2019t see it going away. I kind of think we\u2019re at where we\u2019re going to be now for a while, so that\u2019s a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s decreasing numbers, though, especially for its \u201ceconomically disadvantaged\u201d students, are still alarming. The end-of-year PSSAs and Keystones must eventually reflect a district that is growing, not getting worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two fundamental skills in education, literacy and numeracy,\u201d Kraft said. \u201cThat\u2019s it, that\u2019s all education is about. And if we aren\u2019t doing things that increase either one or both of those, what are we doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

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