Jaime Croissant

SED 335 01
Performance Profile Paper

Using the website futurereadypa.org I compared a school from my home district, Mars

Area Middle School, to the school I am observing at Greensburg-Salem Middle School. When

first looking at the demographics for each school district, I noticed Mars had a high percentage

of enrolled white students at 95.5% and lacked overall diversity in comparison to Greensburg-

Salem. Greensburg- Salem’s Middle School student body is 83.7% white, 5.7% black, 0.6%

Asian, 2.3% Hispanic, and 7.6% two or more races. Although the diversities vary, both schools

do not have any students who are homeless or in foster care. However, Greensburg- Salem has a

much larger population of students who are economically disadvantaged at 47.2 % compared to

Mars’s 6.1%. Also, the schools differ in their amount of students who receive special education,

with Greensburg- Salem being at 16.8% and Mars being at 10.3%.

In terms of school performance, Mars Area Middle School’s percent of proficient or

advanced scores for the English Language Arts PSSAs was already at 81.2%, which greatly

surpasses statewide average of 62.1% and barely above the mark of 82.1% for the 2030

statewide goal. In Mathematics, Mars also is above the statewide average (45.2%) for proficient

and advanced scores at 55.9%. For Science, Mars students, again, are above the statewide

average (66.0%) for advanced and proficient scores being at 78.2%. However, Mars Area Middle

School still needs to reach statewide goals for 2030 in both of those subjects.

In academic growth scores that account for the entire school, Mars falls above the

statewide average growth score and the growth standard in English and Mathematics. For

Science they are still below both of the average growth scores and the growth standards.

Interestingly, Mars has the highest percent of their student’s advanced scores in the subject of
Science at 36.1%. The percentage of advanced scores in English fell at 28.2%, and Mathematics

at 27.8%. All these are above the statewide average of advanced scores.

When looking at Greensburg- Salem Middle school’s performance in percent of

proficient or advanced scores for English Language Arts PSSAs, they had a score of 65.1%. This

is above the statewide average at 62.1%, but below the 2030 statewide 81.1%. For Mathematics

Greensburg- Salem’s percent of proficient or advanced was at 42.1%, which is below the

statewide average (45.2%) and the 2030 statewide goal (71.8%). Lastly, in the advanced and

proficient scores in Science, Greensburg had a score of 60.1%, which was also below the

statewide average (66.0%) and the statewide 2030 goal (83.0%).

In academic growth scores for the entire Greensburg-Salem school are higher than Mars

in their Mathematics as they are above the statewide average growth and the statewide growth

standard with a score of 77.5. However, they are below the statewide average growth score and

growth standard in English and Science. Overall, a smaller percent of students scored proficient

in English, Math, and Science at Greensburg-Salem Middle School compared to Mars Area

Middle School.

Reasons as to why I think the scores vary between these two school districts is mainly

because of the difference in the economically disadvantaged, with Greensburg- Salem being

more than 40% higher than Mars. This has a huge impact on the amount of resources students

receive at home and in school. Growing up in Mars School District, I can confirm that the area is

majority white in population and most of the people I know had two parents that worked.

Although I do not know students at Greensburg-Salem personally, I can assume that a factor for

economical disadvantages could be having only one working parent or living in low-income

neighborhoods.