How'd We Do? PSSA 2008 - HS & MS

There are 8 school districts in Northampton and 9 in Lehigh (though one didn't have scores shown - Northwestern Lehigh, in the numbers I was looking at). So, out of the 16 districts how did Nazareth fare?

Before going there I'll lay out the grounds for my rankings. I personally believe there are two key sets of scores - Advanced and Below Basic, and obviously the better the school the higher the percent in the former and the lower in the latter.

Looking at both HS and MS, the same schools tend to rise to the top in each category, Salisbury, Saucon Valley, Southern Lehigh, and Parkland (pretty clearly the top 25%) with Emmaus not too far behind them. Nazareth falls in at about 7 of 16, which is the better of the middle third.

High School. Math - 8/16, Reading - 6/16

The trend has been 11th shows the greatest drop-0ff and this year was no different.

First the good news - Nazareth was tops (by 0.1%) in NorCo for percent below basic 11.1% and for advanced 35.2% in reading. Parkland, Catasauqua, Emmaus, had better scores in both, and it was a split with Northern Lehigh, Salisbury, and Southern Lehigh (each had more in Advanced, but also a higher percent in Below Basic).

Nazareth was then 4/16 in below basic and 7/16 in Advanced - 5.5/16 overall

Unfortunately, one in five Nazareth 11th graders were Below Basic in Math. At 20.3% Nazareth was at the same level as Pen Argyl and Wilson (20.3 and 20.2) and trailed Saucon Valley (17) in Northampton County. In Lehigh County, Parkland had the lowest percent at 13.7 followed by Emmaus (14.1), Salisbury (15.7), and Southern Lehigh (17.5).

As such, Nazareth was in the 6/7 position out of 16 in this area.

On the advanced side of the math equation, Nazareth fared even worse. At 24.7%, five Lehigh County Schools had a greater percent and 3 NorCo schools did placing Nazareth at 9 out of 16 (call it 8.5 as Bethlehem was technically a split with Freedom scoring higher and Liberty lower).

MS - combined 7/16

Since the number of grades go up, I'm not going to go into the same detail as I could with HS in one grade, but roughly speaking here goes...

Saucon and Parkland were ahead in all grades, all considered categories, Salisbury, Southern Lehigh in most

Northampton, Pen Argyl, Emmaus (one MS came ahead in all, other Naz ahead in most), and Whitehall were split.

Four school districts clearly ahead and in the mix with four others (5-9 range), split difference and call it 7.