On October 2, 2024, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) announced a new voluntary and free tool to help schools to track student achievement, The Pennsylvania Firefly Student Progress Indicators (PA Firefly) is a PA-specific tool that will allow educators to assess students’ mastery of material taught in PA classrooms and covered on end-of-year exams, and intervene earlier to help students who need more help to fully master certain material.

“Pennsylvania’s new PA Firefly benchmarking tool provides a comprehensive view of student learning in real time, helping teachers meet day-to-day goals and end-of-year targets,” said Secretary of Education Dr. Khalid N. Mumin. “We want students across the Commonwealth to succeed and have all the tools necessary to do so at their fingertips. Resources like PA Firefly help to gauge where students are at, so we can meet them there and help them grow and thrive.”

Earlier this year, Governor Josh Shapiro announced changes to the state’s system of school assessments that will reduce the amount of time students spend taking standardized tests, mitigate stress and anxiety around testing by adopting question types that match how students learn, help teachers spend more time teaching, and save the Commonwealth millions of dollars.

PA Firefly will be available in Pennsylvania schools to support student learning throughout the year, starting this school year. The diagnostic exam is fully aligned to Pennsylvania standards to reflect and measure the same student knowledge and skills measured by the summative end-of-year and end-of-course assessments. It signals student readiness for Pennsylvania’s end-of-year exams and lights the way with high-quality reporting and instructional resources for teachers throughout the year.

As a custom benchmark assessment built specifically for Pennsylvania classrooms, PA Firefly will support student learning throughout the year and provide feedback relative to on-grade expectations, as well as predictions for student performance on end-of-year assessments.

PA Firefly is a fully online, computer-adaptive assessment designed to be administered as single-session tests on the same platform as Pennsylvania’s summative assessments. Testing is available throughout the year, beginning in the fall and ending with the spring assessments. Seasonal testing windows will enable educators to track progress and help learners meet milestones throughout the school year. 

For more information on the Pennsylvania Department of Education, please visit the website.