Fleetwood in Top 6% of Schools in PA

The Future Ready PA Index shows residents how each school is performing academically and which direction each school is trending. Fleetwood is performing second best in the county, right under Kutztown. Six years ago, when Mr. Stephen Herman was not principal, Fleetwood was in the bottom 15% of all high schools in the state. Now, Fleetwood is 47th out of 895 schools, which is the top 6%. But how is that measured?

On a school’s SPP, School Performance Profile, under the Indicators of Academic Achievement, points can be earned for every student scoring proficient or advanced on the PSSAs, any of the Keystone exams, and on the SATs and ACTs, etc. From there, each of those categories is weighed on a factor value.

For instance, Fleetwood had 70.10% of all students pass the Science/Biology Keystones, which had a factor value of 7.5%. The percentage of passing students is multiplied by the factor value (70.10*0.075) to get 5.25 points. 

The SPP chart goes a step further to break down how many students earned advanced on the Keystone Exams and PSSAs. Exactly 22.33% of students scored advanced on mathematics/algebra I, 35.29% scored advanced on science/biology, but only 11.22% scored advanced on literature/ELA state tests compared to last year’s 5.2%. The current advanced average is 17.8% of all students statewide. 

Fleetwood students are currently trending towards fewer students every year scoring proficient on state exams district-wide. The rate of proficiency in the years 2017 to 2018  was 81.7%. Exactly 79.02% of all students scored at least proficient last school year, where the state average was 62.1%. What can explain this performance dip, and should Fleetwood students and staff be concerned?

The answer is no, and here is why. The anticipated statewide average for 2030 is set to 81.1% proficiency. Fleetwood hit that number last year and is currently 2.08% away from reaching it again. There were 844 students enrolled in the high school last year, which meant that 18 students underperforming can have a big impact. Those 18 make up about 2.08%. It is safe to assume that most of them were a few points away from proficiency and will do better this year.

When it comes to graduation rates, 96.43% of students who were a part of the 2019 class graduated, compared to 2018’s 96.6%. Why are these figures not at 100%? The SPP is measuring graduation in cohort fashion. This means that students who moved to other school districts are still counted as if they never graduated.

For the graduated class of 2017-18, the school saw a sudden spike of 15.7% of students entering the PA workforce to 50.7% just last year. Does that mean that one in two students decided not to further his or her education or enlist in the military? The data suggests that, while 50.7% of 2019 graduates started working in the Commonwealth, 77.1% did further their education, and 8% of them enlisted in the military. Notice how those figures add up beyond 100%.

What does the above data mean? It means that post-secondary education attendees have gone up. It is also good that graduates have found alternate routes to succeed in life apart from only attending a college. From all SPP categories to proficient PSSA scores, from meeting annual subject growth to graduation, Fleetwood has accumulated 87.8 points out of 100. Students are in a place where success is all around them with well-equipped staff.