Fetch Pennsylvania PSSA assessment data — fetch

Downloads and processes PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment) data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education. PSSA assesses students in grades 3-8 on English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science.

Usage

fetch_pssa(end_year, level = "school", tidy = TRUE, use_cache = TRUE)

Arguments

end_year: School year end (e.g., 2024 for 2023-24). Valid years: 2015-2025 except 2020 (COVID cancellation).
level: Data aggregation level: "school" (default), "district", or "state"
tidy: If TRUE (default), returns data in long format with proficiency levels as rows. If FALSE, returns wide format.
use_cache: If TRUE (default), uses locally cached data when available. Set to FALSE to force re-download from PDE.

Value

Data frame with PSSA assessment data

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Get 2025 school-level PSSA data
pssa_2025 <- fetch_pssa(2025)

# Get wide format
pssa_wide <- fetch_pssa(2025, tidy = FALSE)

# Get state-level summary
pssa_state <- fetch_pssa(2025, level = "state")

# Force fresh download (ignore cache)
pssa_fresh <- fetch_pssa(2025, use_cache = FALSE)
} # }