Lehighton Area School District leaders say the key to improving student performance lies in one word — data.

At Monday’s administrators unveiled the district’s 2025-26 beginning-of-the-year assessment results and outlined a strategy to use that data to guide instruction, close learning gaps and strengthen curriculum alignment.

“The number one thing we can do from the district level is encourage teachers to become more data-informed,” Superintendent Jason Moser said during the presentation. “We have to put good data in their hands. Grades, quite frankly, are sometimes invalid. They only measure what an individual teacher decides they measure.”

Moser noted that the district now has more consistent, standardized tools to identify where students need support.

“When we say we have 60% of our students reading on grade level, we know what that actually means according to state standards,” they said. “The first step is knowing exactly what those gaps are.”

The district’s universal assessments include Acadience Reading for early elementary grades, MAP Growth Reading and Math for grades two through eight, i-Ready Math, and Exact Path assessments in high school. The results showed a mix of strengths and areas needing attention across grade levels.

Acadience Reading results showed 76% of first graders meeting benchmark expectations at the start of the year.

“We should see that increase by the midyear assessment,” Moser said. “Kindergartners haven’t been tested yet because they’re still learning school, but second grade began with about 63% of students meeting the benchmark.”

Officials said they will track where progress slows to determine whether the issue lies in curriculum, instruction, or the assessment itself.

At the upper elementary level, MAP Growth Reading tests measure comprehension. Second-grade scores, for example, showed 39% of students above the 60th percentile.

“You’ll see this data again at midyear to see if there’s growth,” Moser said. “You’re not likely to see 15 percentage points of growth midyear. If you see 3%, that’s significant. What we want is a continual upward trajectory.”

The district has also expanded its intervention teams to target struggling students early.

“When you can deliver short, intensive interventions early on, you can sometimes close a gap within six to 12 weeks,” Moser said. “If you wait, that gap only gets bigger. That’s why we’ve dedicated so many resources to our intervention team.”

In math, 27% of sixth graders began the year on or above grade level — a number officials described as promising.

“Those students are entering in pretty good shape, still with room for growth,” Moser said.

At the high school level, Exact Path assessments showed 36% of students performing at or above the 50th percentile in algebra and 23% in English 9 and 10. “That’s one of our major focus areas,” Moser said, noting that the English department’s Keystone literature results showed “tremendous growth” last year.

Teachers, Moser said, now have more access to student data than ever before.

“Now, it starts in the classroom,” he added. “We can’t intervene our way out of all of these problems — we need to know exactly where our kids are so we can tailor instruction to their needs.”

Director Jeremy Glaush said it’s also important for families to understand the district’s efforts.

“We need to get the word out that the administration is trying to do this,” he said. “Parents should know we’re improving things and trying to figure out what to do better.”

To support that goal, the district plans to send home reports in kindergarten and first grade that focus on assessment data rather than traditional report cards. “We’re sharing these reports so parents have an honest assessment of where their child stands compared to national norms,” Moser said. “And we’re showing them the plan for what we’re going to do to help their child grow.”