Pleasant Valley high school and middle school students are often achieving above other students across the state on assessment tests, but like their peers, they are struggling to be advanced or proficient in math and science.

The Pennsylvania Value Added Assessment System compiled data from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment and the Keystone exams to give school districts an indication of their performance.

According to data presented at a recent Pleasant Valley School Board meeting, only 38.2% of the seventh-graders in the state scored in the categories of advanced and proficient in math on the PSSA exam in spring 2019. In the Pleasant Valley School District, 39.3% of seventh-graders scored in these categories. For eighth-graders, the state level was 32.2% and 28.1% for Pleasant Valley.

The PSSA exams are given to students in third through eighth grade. The results of the Keystone exams showed similar results to the PSSAs. The Keystone exams are end-of-course assessments in Algebra I, literature and biology, and are given to students in high school and those in middle school where it applies.

In the state, 39.1% of both first-time test takers and subsequent test takers scored in the advanced and proficient categories for Algebra 1, which includes high school and middle school. In Pleasant Valley, 43% of all test takers scored in this category for Algebra 1. Seventh- and eighth-grade students have the option to take either on-level math for their grades, Algebra I or Honors Algebra II. The track is determined based on the student’s classroom grades, PSSA results and placement exams, said Jason Van Voorhis, the middle school principal.

“We need to make sure that students are learning at their own pace,” he told the board. Van Voorhis was accompanied in the presentation by Josh Ziatyk, the first assistant to the superintendent; high school Principal Matthew Triolo; and Susan Mowrer Benda, the director of curriculum and instruction.

Of the students who are in the basic or below basic categories, the school district discovered there are students who are struggling to “apply and extend previous understandings of operations to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers,” as stated in the presentation.

“They’re struggling the most with areas of basic math,” Van Voorhis said.

In the short term, the district is exploring co-teaching, using Imagine Math and other technology, and expanding ways teachers can share teaching ideas. In the long term, they suggested developing a committee for master schedule revision to be implemented possibly as early as the 2020-21 school year.

Mowrer Benda said part of increasing the learning in students is helping teachers to learn additional ways to teach.

“We want to ensure that every student grows and every student achieves,” she said. “If we do not invest in our teachers, we cannot possibly invest in our students.”

As for science, the PSSAs showed that 54.2% of the eighth-graders in the state scored in the advanced and proficient categories. For Pleasant Valley, 58.2% scored in those categories.

The Keystone exam tests students who have taken biology in the winter and in the spring. In the state, 28.5% scored in the advanced and proficient categories when the test was given in the winter, 25% in Pleasant Valley. The scores rose to 46.9% in the state in the spring and 44.4% in Pleasant Valley.

Triolo said he wants to work toward moving the students who scored lower on the exams into the higher categories.

“We need to grow those numbers in the middle,” he said.

Triolo is proposing that those students take enhancement classes in biology where teachers will go through the topic and help students learn what they missed.

School board Director Laura Jecker asked when enhancement classes would be offered.

Triolo said during a time period allotted for electives.

He also said the district is looking at increasing the number of math coaches, reviewing the curriculum and implementing science as part of the curriculum from kindergarten through sixth grade. Currently, students in first through third grade do not have science on a daily basis.

Mowrer Benda said the district is realizing students need to be studying science every day from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Students throughout Pennsylvania and in Pleasant Valley are doing well in the language arts. Statewide, 60.4% of seventh-graders and 57.9% of eighth-graders are in the advanced and proficient categories. In Pleasant Valley, those numbers jump to 73.3% in seventh grade and 62.7% in eighth grade. Similarly, the Keystone exams show that Pleasant Valley scored a 56.5% at the high school, which outperformed the state at 47.7%.