Wissahickon Charter School is mandated by Act 22 to participate in all local and state assessment programs. Therefore, students at the school take the Terra Nova and PSSA tests each year beginning in 1st grade (PSSA tests only in grades 3, 5 and 8).
Open since 2002, WCS has seen strong gains in all areas as measured by the Terra Nova test. In fact, those students who began their elementary school experience at WCS score in the 60th national percentile in both reading and math. Overall the school performs above the 50th percentile. We were very excited to see our hard work pay off. While we don't agree with standardized tests as the only measure of a child's success at school, they are an indicator and we have only seen gains since we opened our doors in 2002.
This year's PSSA results are especially impressive. The school's fifth grade scores (those that the State bases Adequate Yearly Progress on under NCLB) soared from 22% to 37% of students being proficient or above in reading and from 18% to a whopping 51% in math.
We are very pleased with these test results as it shows that a hands-on, project-based curriculum can be successful in a public school.