The bulletin board for America's public schools. Parents, teachers, students, and staff. One community per school.

Test scores

Palmyra Area SHS · Palmyra, PA
See how it ranks: all Pennsylvania schools by score · Lebanon County schools by score

PSSA + Keystone, SY 2024-25

All grades, all students. % Proficient or Advanced.
English Language Arts / Literature
89.6%
State avg 51.1%
District avg 71.2%
County avg 52.3%
+1.3pp since 2023-24
Mathematics / Algebra I
79.5%
State avg 43.0%
District avg 65.9%
County avg 43.3%
+4.9pp since 2023-24
Science / Biology
73.9%
State avg 50.6%
District avg 73.9%
County avg 47.5%
-1.7pp since 2023-24

What this means: On the PSSA + Keystone, Pennsylvania's statewide test, about 90 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 80 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 74 of 100 are at grade level in science. Across all Pennsylvania schools, those numbers are about 51, 43, and 51. Reading and writing scores are up about 1 points since 2023, while math scores are up about 5 points and science scores are down about 2 points.

BeatsExpectations

Demographically-adjusted score · methodology
Tier
AS EXPECTED
Performing as predicted given the school's student profile
Actual proficiency
80.3%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
64.7%
based on PA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+15.5pp
above demographic expectation

What this means: About 80% of students here test proficient in math and reading, compared with the roughly 65% 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 →

By grade, SY 2024-25

School score vs state average per tested grade.
GradeEnglish Language Arts / LiteratureMathematics / Algebra IScience / Biology
SchoolStaten testedSchoolStaten testedSchoolStaten tested
Grade HS89.6%63.4%25979.5%45.5%25873.9%50.6%257

2-year history

All grades, all students. Palmyra Area   Pennsylvania avg

English Language Arts / Literature

55882023-2451902024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2589.6%71.2%52.3%51.1%
SY 2023-2488.3%76.4%54.3%55.1%

Mathematics / Algebra I

41752023-2443802024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2579.5%65.9%43.3%43.0%
SY 2023-2474.6%66.3%40.2%41.4%

Science / Biology

63762023-2451742024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2573.9%73.9%47.5%50.6%
SY 2023-2475.6%79.4%62.0%62.7%

Recent discussions

From the Palmyra Area SHS community.

See all discussions at Palmyra Area SHS →

How to read these scores

What is PSSA + Keystone?
PSSA + Keystone is the statewide standardized test administered by Pennsylvania public schools.
What does "% Proficient or Advanced" mean?
It is the share of students at the school who performed at grade level or above on the test, summed across the top two of four performance levels. A higher number is better.
What does 89.6% mean for English Language Arts / Literature at Palmyra Area SHS?
It means about 89.6 percent of students tested at Palmyra Area SHS performed at grade level or above on the PSSA + Keystone English Language Arts / Literature test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Pennsylvania that year was 51.1%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Pennsylvania, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Pennsylvania Department of Education, Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) for grades 3-8 and Keystone Exams (Literature, Algebra I, Biology) at the high-school level. School-level All Students subgroup, "Percent Proficient and above" column from the PDE school-level data downloads. Top 2 of 4 PA performance levels (Proficient + Advanced).
How often is it updated?
PSSA + Keystone is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.

← Back to Palmyra Area SHS