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If you had an hour of school board time for Derry Area MS, what would you bring up?
Community prompt from u/allk12. Replies below.
Enrollment
440
Middle
DISTRICT 597 · STATE 594
SCHOOL COMMUNITY·DERRY AREA SD·NCES 420756004351
Derry Area Middle School
994 North Chestnut St Ext, Derry, PA 15627 · (724) 694-8231 · Westmoreland County
GRADES 06–08MIDDLE21-SUBURBTITLE IREGULAR SCHOOL440 STUDENTS
A-
allk12 Grade
Scored higher than 77% of Pennsylvania public middle schools
- BTest scores Share of students meeting the state standard in reading, math, and other tested subjects, 2023-24 and 2024-25.
- A+Beats expectations How far test scores land above or below what the share of low-income students predicts for a school in this state.
- ·Three-year trend Not available for this school, so the grade uses the other parts.
Grades compare a school only with schools in the same state, because every state gives its own test. How grades work · Top-graded Pennsylvania public middle schools
Student : Teacher
11.8:1
37 FTE teachers
DISTRICT 12.6:1 · STATE 13.2:1
Free / Reduced Lunch
96%
421 students
DISTRICT 98% · STATE 75%
Community
1
0 members
Enrollment and student:teacher ratio compared against other middle schools. Free/Reduced Lunch and demographics compared against all schools.
Enrollment by grade, 2024-25
| Grade | Students | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 147 | 33% |
| Grade 7 | 145 | 33% |
| Grade 8 | 148 | 34% |
Student demographics
17%Diversity index
The chance that two students picked at random belong to different racial or ethnic groups.
DISTRICT 15% · STATE 59% · US 70%
Student head counts by race/ethnicity from federal NCES enrollment data. District, state, and US figures are each group's share of all public school students in that area (US excludes territories). Very small groups may be suppressed in the source, so categories do not always sum exactly to total enrollment.
Gender split
School pathway
Students here typically continue to
Derry Area Middle School→Derry Area SHS
Feeds from
Based on grade levels within Derry Area SD. Attendance zones can vary; confirm enrollment with the district.
Test scores
PSSA + Keystone 2024-25 . % Proficient or AdvancedEnglish Language Arts
60.2%
PA avg 51.1% . +2.4pp since 2023
Math
37.8%
PA avg 43.0% . -3.5pp since 2023
What this means: On the PSSA + Keystone, Pennsylvania's statewide test, about 60 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level and about 38 of 100 do math at grade level. Across all Pennsylvania schools, those numbers are about 51 and 43. Reading and writing scores are up about 2 points since 2023, while math scores are down about 4 points.
PSSA + Keystone results by year
| School year | English Language Arts | Math |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | 60.2% | 37.8% |
| 2023-24 | 57.8% | 41.3% |
% Proficient or Advanced, all students and all tested grades.
Source: PSSA + Keystone. All students, all grades. See all years and grades →
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
AS EXPECTED
Performing as predicted given the school's student profile
Actual proficiency
49.0%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
36.6%
based on PA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+12.4pp
above demographic expectation
What this means: About 49% of students here test proficient in math and reading, compared with the roughly 37% typical for Pennsylvania schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations measures results against demographically similar schools rather than by raw scores, and this school falls within the typical range, neither among Pennsylvania's top nor bottom 10%.
BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual. How this is calculated →
Schools most like Derry Area Middle School
Derry Area Middle School's state test result (49.0% proficient) is higher than 4 of the 5 schools below with a result.
| School | Students | Low-income | Proficient |
|---|---|---|---|
| Derry Area Middle School this school | 440 | 95.7% | 49.0% |
| Mifflinburg Area Middle School Mifflinburg | 445 | 94.8% | 50.1% |
| St Marys Area Middle School Saint Marys | 459 | 96.7% | 38.5% |
| West Perry Middle School Elliottsburg | 499 | 96.6% | 44.1% |
| Albert Gallatin North Middle School McClellandtown | 375 | 98.9% | 37.4% |
| Harlan Rowe Middle School Athens | 496 | 93.5% | 44.7% |
Matched among Pennsylvania middle schools on enrollment, the share of students from low-income families (eligible for free or reduced-price lunch), and racial and ethnic makeup. Proficient is the average share of students meeting the state standard across all of the school's state tests in 2023-24 and 2024-25, the same combined score our test-score rankings use. Online schools and schools serving specialized populations are not matched.
Where Derry Area Middle School ranks
Among middle schools| Measure | This school | In Pennsylvania | In Westmoreland County |
|---|---|---|---|
| State test proficiency ranked highest first | 49.0% | #226 of 479 | #11 of 18 |
| Math proficiency ranked highest first | 37.8% | #245 of 513 ▼ 52 | #11 of 19 ▼ 1 |
| Reading proficiency ranked highest first | 60.2% | #148 of 513 ▲ 92 | #9 of 19 ▲ 2 |
| Enrollment ranked largest first | 440 | #343 of 522 | #12 of 19 |
| Students per teacher ranked fewest first | 11.8:1 | #127 of 486 | #2 of 18 |
| Diversity index ranked most diverse first | 16.6% | #412 of 486 | #10 of 18 |
| Free and reduced lunch ranked highest share first | 95.7% | #135 of 510 | #2 of 19 |
| Enrollment change since 2017-18 ranked fastest growth first | +0.2% | #130 of 131 | #6 of 6 |
Ranked against other public middle schools. Online schools are left out of every list, and test-score lists leave out schools that serve specialized populations. Each rank links to the full list. Arrows under a test-score rank show places moved since the prior test year, among schools tested both years.
4-year change
SY 2020-21 vs SY 2024-25Enrollment
440
-27 (-6%) vs 2020
-35% since 1990-91, when it was 676
Student : Teacher
11.8:1
was 14.6:1
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
Enrollment and staffing by year
| School year | Students | Teachers (FTE) | Students per teacher | Free and reduced lunch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | 440 | 37.2 | 11.8:1 | 96% (421) |
| 2023-24 | 421 | 38.5 | 10.9:1 | 100% (421) |
| 2022-23 | 443 | 37 | 12.0:1 | 100% (443) |
| 2020-21 | 467 | 32 | 14.6:1 | 43% (201) |
| 2017-18 | 439 | 33.4 | 13.2:1 | 45% (197) |
| 2015-16 | 446 | 33 | 13.5:1 | 42% (188) |
| 2010-11 | 550 | 45 | 12.2:1 | 48% (263) |
| 2000-01 | 680 | 47 | 14.5:1 | 0% (0) |
| 1990-91 | 676 | 48 | 14.1:1 | N/A |
Source: NCES Common Core of Data. Rows are the federal collections on file for Derry Area Middle School.
Since 2017-18: students unchanged (439 to 440); teachers up 11% (33.4 to 37.2).
About Derry Area Middle School
At 994 North Chestnut St Ext in Derry, Pennsylvania, Derry Area Middle School operates as a small middle school. It serves 440 students in grades 6 through 8. For comparison, middle schools in Pennsylvania average about 594 students.
Derry Area SD has 3 schools and 1,791 students, and Derry Area Middle School is one of those schools.
At Derry Area Middle School, White students make up 91% of the student body. It is also 5% multiracial and 2% Black. That is close to the 92% White share among all Westmoreland County residents. By the diversity index, Derry Area Middle School comes in at 17%.
The school's student-to-teacher ratio is about 11.8:1, with 37.2 full-time-equivalent teachers. Among middle schools in Pennsylvania, the typical ratio is 13.2:1. Lunch subsidy eligibility at Derry Area Middle School is 96%. That rate is above the 53% average among public schools in Westmoreland County.
Derry Area Middle School is graded A- by allk12, scoring above 77% of Pennsylvania public middle schools once test results, poverty-adjusted performance, and the recent trend are combined.
Schools in Pennsylvania with a similar free or reduced-price lunch share are predicted to score about 36.6%. Derry Area Middle School scores 49.0%.
Derry Area Middle School is located in Westmoreland County, where median household income is about $74,109, about 33% of adults have at least a bachelor's degree, and roughly 7% of residents are in poverty. Derry Area Middle School is one of 85 public schools in Westmoreland County, which together enroll about 41,302 students.
The next-closest public school is Derry Area SHS, less than a tenth of a mile away. In all, 5 other public schools sit within five miles of Derry Area Middle School. Its average proficiency rate of 49.0% is below the 52.5% average for nearby schools.
The National Center for Education Statistics classifies the school's location as Suburb: Large, meaning it is in a suburban area outside a principal city, within an urbanized area with a population of 250,000 or more.
The student count in 2024-25 was 440, 6% below the 467 of 2020-21. Students per teacher fell from 14.6 in 2020-21 to 11.8 in 2024-25.
Posts about school safety, transportation, and start times are welcome on this page. Questions from prospective families are welcome too.
Westmoreland County at a glance
View full county profilePopulation
352,500
Census ACS
Median income
$74,109
Household, ACS
Bachelor's+
33%
Adults 25+
Poverty rate
7%
Below federal line
Schools in county
85
41,302 students
Quick facts
Related schools
Other schools in Derry Area SD
- Grandview Elementary SchoolElementary · 753 students
- Derry Area SHSHigh · 598 students
Other schools in Derry
- Grandview Elementary SchoolElementary · 753 students
- Derry Area SHSHigh · 598 students
Nearby schools
- Derry Area SHS0.1 mi · 598
- Grandview Elementary School0.4 mi · 753
- Eastern Westmoreland Career and Technology Center3.1 mi · 6
- Latrobe Elementary School3.9 mi · 627
- Dr Robert Ketterer CS Inc4.7 mi · 127
- Greater Latrobe Junior High School5.3 mi · 499
Frequently asked questions
About Derry Area Middle SchoolHow large is Derry Area Middle School?
Derry Area Middle School enrolls approximately 440 students in grades 06-08.
What grades does Derry Area Middle School serve?
Derry Area Middle School serves grades 06-08.
How many students per teacher at Derry Area Middle School?
Approximately 11.8:1 students per teacher at Derry Area Middle School.
How diverse is Derry Area Middle School?
Derry Area Middle School reports a student body of 91% White, 2% Hispanic, 2% Black, 5% Two or more.
Who oversees Derry Area Middle School?
Derry Area Middle School is overseen by Derry Area SD in Westmoreland County.
Data sourceSchool profile facts are sourced from the NCES. Community content is posted by allk12 members.