Maria Emanuele

Assessment
District Performance Analysis
2/18/15
Mt. Pleasant Area school district ranks average at 73.5 for
building level academic score. This score is the result of many factors
such as the average socioeconomic status of the district, the amount
of special education and gifted students, and academic scores on NRTs.
Also, by reviewing graduation, attendance, and dropout rate, and
comparing to other districts, I am able to gain rationale as to why the
districts academic score is average.
I decided to compare Mt. Pleasant Area, a lower income district
to Greater Latrobe Area, a higher income area with a larger population.
For instance, the enrollment for Mt. Pleasant Senior High School is 652
and Greater Latrobe High School is 975. Mt. Pleasant has 6.13% special
education students and Latrobe has 9.23% but this is expected since it
is a much larger school. Mt. Pleasant also has a lower number of gifted
students at 3.53% and Latrobe at 8.31% but population size should
again be taken into consideration. Also, Mt. Pleasant is 35.43%
economically disadvantaged and Latrobe is 28.31% economically
disadvantaged. In addition, the graduation rate for Mt. Pleasant Area is
89.74% compared to Latrobes at 95.87%. By comparing these
percentages, it is evident that Mt. Pleasant is a lower income district

than Latrobe and has a significantly lower graduation rate. Due to this,
I can infer why Mt. Pleasants academic score is on the lower side.
In addition, after comparing Mt. Pleasants NRT (Norm
Referenced Test) scores, such as SATs, PSSAs, and Keystones to
Latrobe, I saw an even larger discrepancy with the scores. For the SATs,
Mt. Pleasant scored the averages of 495.15 for Math, 495.25 for
Reading and 481.51 for Writing. I was very surprised to see how low
these scores were when compared to Latrobe at 537.89 for Math,
507.99 for Reading, and 484.85 for Writing. In addition, for the PSSA
and Keystone exams at Mt. Pleasant, 78.62% scored proficient or
advanced in Math/Algebra, 85.44% scored proficient or advanced in
Reading/Literature, and 68.15% scored proficient or advanced in
Science/Biology. These scored were also very low compared to Latrobe
where 85.03% scored proficient or advanced in Math/Algebra, 92.99%
scored proficient or advanced in Reading/Literature and 75.40% scored
proficient or advanced in Science/Biology.
There are many factors that contribute to the discrepancy of the
scores for Mt. Pleasant Area school district. Mt. Pleasant is more
economically disadvantaged to most school districts and also has a
lower graduation rate. These two factors could contribute to student
motivation and success in school. In addition, there was a very large
discrepancy in NRT scores for Mt. Pleasant. When compared to other
schools, these scores reflect how there should be change to the

curriculum. It is evident that there is probably not much time being

spent on test preparation in the classroom. I would propose for teacher
instruction to make more time for test preparation. The teacher could
use a CRT (Criterion Referenced Test) based on the standards that are
addressed in the NRTs that the students are struggling on. The teacher
could then use a Bell Curve to evaluate how the students scored and to
see which students will need more assistance in NRT test preparation.