In response to a request from several superintendents, the Pennsylvania Department of Education has initiated a plan with its Pennsylvania System of School Assessment vendor, Data Recognition Corporation, to provide districts the opportunity to receive electronic copies of their students’ writing responses from the 2014 Spring Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Writing assessment. The writing prompts from the “legacy” writing assessment will not be used in the new Pennsylvania System of School Assessment English Language Arts assessment. As such, the Pennsylvania Department of Education has approved the release of these items in response to district requests to use information from the legacy writing assessment to help gauge student writing skills and guide curriculum.

If your district is interested in receiving its students’ writing responses from the 2014 Spring Pennsylvania System of School Assessment Writing assessment, you will need to contact Data Recognition Corporation to make the necessary arrangements. Data Recognition Corporation will provide your student responses on a DVD format that will include the capability to utilize student-identifying data to search for specific results.  The cost to receive a DVD containing all of the 2014 Writing assessment responses for your district is $1,600. The cost of the Writing-response DVD must be paid directly to DRC (all invoicing and logistics will be handled by Data Recognition Corporation).