Pleasant Valley School District’s students are struggling to reach state proficiency levels in English, math and science — particularly in the high school and middle school — but the state’s overall proficiency levels have dropped as well.

During the school board’s workshop session this month, principals and their department heads presented assessment data in charts, with green being at or above the state proficiency level and red being below. The data was based on the Keystone exams for 11th grade students in literature, algebra 1 and biology; the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests for third grade through eighth grade in English language arts, mathematics and science; and the district’s Northwest Evaluation Association exams, which have just started being used this school year.

At the high school, the students continued to meet proficiency levels in literature with 67.4% of the students testing at or above the state average, which was 62.1 % in the spring of 2025. The school has consistently shown scores above the state average for the last five years. It did drop below the average in 2019 when students showed a proficiency of 69.3%, but the state average was 71.5%.

Math and science

The school fell into the red in algebra 1 and biology.

PVHS had a proficiency score of 39.6% in math. The state average was 49.4%. PVHS has been below the state average for five of the last seven times the test was given. The test was canceled in 2020, but in 2021 and 2022, PVHS tested above the state average.

As for biology, Maricatherine Garr, the Science Department chair, said the state waived the Keystone exam in biology in 2025 for all schools because the state’s Science, Technology and Engineering, Environmental Literacy and Sustainability standards were going into effect in the 2025-26 school year. The new STEELS standard was adopted in 2022, but some schools made the transition prior to the effective date, while others had not done so yet.

In the years prior to the waiver, the high school has consistently been below the state average for proficiency every year. Proficiency levels had gone up in 2023 to 47.3% and 47.1% in 2024, but the state level in 2023 was 50.7% and 50.5% in 2024.

As for the school district’s NWEA tests, which were given at the beginning of the year and in the middle of the year, results showed a drop in proficiency by the middle of the year. The tests are not identical. The one later in the school year includes information that the students should have learned up to that point.

At the beginning of the year, 57% of students tested proficient or advanced in English 10. This dropped by 2% in the middle of the year. In algebra 1, 27% of the students were proficient or advanced; this, too, dropped by 2% points. And for biology, 37% of the students were proficient or advanced, and the percentage dropped by 7% by the middle of the year.

Garr said the tests for biology were not comparable because they had concentrated on life sciences, which was only one-third of the test at the beginning of the school year. It was the main focus of the second test.

Interpreting data

Principal Brian Boylan said, “Looking at the data here, you have student achievement and you have student growth. Student achievement is very important. We’re focusing, however, on student growth. As a district, we feel that is where we want to put all of our apples, because again, we want students to grow throughout their years in high school.”

School board director John Gesiskie saw it differently.

“Looking at those numbers, and for most people would say, ‘Ooo, green. Looks great.’ But however, that’s basically stating that the state average has dropped, because if you look up in the literature, 69.3% was below the state average back in 2018-19, which was prior to COVID. … I’m not quite sure if this is a smoke and mirror type thing that we throw green up and look it’s above, we’re doing better than the state. I don’t care about the rest of the state, I really don’t. I care about Pleasant Valley, and Pleasant Valley are the kids I want to see exceed. And when I see that we’re going down it doesn’t make me happy.”

Gesiskie also said he thinks it is unacceptable to be fine with a negative drop between the beginning and the middle of the school year on the NWEA tests.

Assistant Superintendent Rae Lin Howard said, “I don’t think any of us are saying that we’re happy with these scores. Everybody is working very hard. … We can’t get better if we don’t know where we are, and I applaud everybody here.”

The middle school’s department heads shed some light into a possible reason for low test scores — reading.

Struggle with reading

Middle school math teacher Sara Markowski said the school district’s iReady program is a reading level that is at grade level, “but our students are not able to read our materials. They struggle with reading. It’s not that they struggle with the math, they can’t even get to the math.”

The sixth graders scored at 53% proficiency for English Language Arts on the PSSA exams, which was above the state average at 50.8%. Similarly, they scored a 44% in math, which was also above the state average of 37.8%. But it went downhill for the seventh and eighth grade students.

For the seventh-graders, 40% were proficient in ELA; the state average was 49.2%. And 24% proficiency in math with the state average at 33.7%. The eighth-graders had a 34% proficiency in ELA with a state average of 49.3%, and 30% proficiency in math with a state average of 30.5%.

PSSA’s science assessment is only for eighth-graders, and it was waived for 2025. Still, it has been below average in four of the last six years on the chart when students took the test.

Curriculum change

Christopher Lesoine, a science teacher at the middle school, said he has been a teacher at PVSD for 29 years, and PSSA science test scores had always been in the green until 2019. The school district changed the science curriculum, and the PSSA tests changed to requiring more reading that requires more analysis and comparing.

“They have to understand and comprehend the question to answer the science portion,” he said.

Lesoine explained that he has had students that are three to seven grade levels behind in their reading ability.

“I am seeing these last few years, kids come to the middle school that very simply can’t read,” he said.

Lesoine said he thinks the students would benefit from more reading specialists and more time spent on reading as a separate class. He said the school district combined the 45-minute reading class and the 45-minute English class, and now have one 45-mintue class for both.

“It all goes back to reading,” he said.