Curriculum

Bethel Park School District Curriculum

The links to the right will take you to the curriculum areas that you are interested in reviewing. Click here to see our most recent Outcomes Report (Dec. 14, 2022).

Click here for the Curriculum & Instruction page.

Assessing

Formative and summative assessments are used throughout the school year to help provide feedback to both teachers and students on progress. The Bethel Park School District uses high-quality, research-based assessments and utilized the data to make instructional and curricular decisions. Formative assessments include the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) which are administered throughout the year. Students in grades three through eight participate in the PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment) tests in the spring. High school students and some middle school students take the Keystone Exams. To learn more about each of these assessments, please select from the menu.

Map Testing

CLICK FOR A RECORDING OF THE FAMILY MAP SESSION HELD ON FEBRUARY 22 & 23, 2022.

Bethel Park uses the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) growth assessment, which is given to students in grades one through five in the fall, winter, and spring of each school year. Kindergarteners take MAP assessments twice, in the winter and spring. These assessments are designed to measure a child’s progress or growth in school. These assessments are adaptive, meaning that question difficulty is based upon the results of previous answers.

MAP was developed by the Northwest Education Association (NWEA), a not-for-profit educational service organization with over 30 years in assessment development and research. More information about MAP can be found here.

MAP Parent Letter Template .pdf

Family Guide to MAP Growth

Dibels Tests (Grades K-2)

DIBELS tests four of the skills that are necessary for learning to read. Children who learn these skills become good readers. These skills are:

Phonemic Awareness: Hearing and using sounds in spoken words
Phonics: Knowing the sounds of the letters and sounding out written words
Accurate and Fluent Reading: Reading stories and other materials easily and quickly with few mistakes
Reading Comprehension: Understanding what is read

For more information on these skills, visit The Big Ideas in Reading page.

InView Assessment (Grades 2 & 6)

InView™ comprises five tests that reliably measure skills and abilities important for academic success.

InView tests:

Verbal Reasoning: Words
Verbal Reasoning: Context
Sequences
Analogies
Quantitative Reasoning

Tests present students with innovative items that assess skills such as understanding verbal and quantitative concepts and analyzing and comprehending relationships between verbal and nonverbal stimuli.

Bright Spots