Perkiomen Valley High School. Photo by James Short.
In new rankings based on standardized test scores, Perkiomen Valley School District has landed in the top 50 of best school districts in the state.
According to Pittsburgh Business Times and its sister publication the Philadelphia Business Journal, Perkiomen Valley is 47 out of 481 school districts ranked in the state.
All in all, four of the top 10 school districts in Pennsylvania are in Greater Philadelphia: Lower Merion, which took the top spot, Radnor Township, Tredyffrin-Easttown and Unionville-Chadds Ford.
The data was compiled by the Pittsburgh Business Times, according to the report. Topping Perkiomen Valley in the compilation was, to name a few school districts, New Hope-Solebury, Wissahickon, and Upper Dublin.
Out of 500 school districts in Pennsylvania only 481 were ranked, as districts with incomplete data were not considered for the rankings.
Pittsburgh Business Times, per the article, used Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) scores for math, English and science, and Keystones scores for literature, algebra and biology between 2021 and 2024. The report said many school districts had missing Keystones data for biology in 2022 and literature in 2021. According to the article, grades three through eight receive math and reading scores, and grades fourth and eighth receive science scores.
The newspaper took a district’s percentage of students placing in the top two standardized test categories and then compared it to the departure from the average for the set, per the article. This “z-score” is a measurement of the number of standard deviations of a district either above or below the data set mean. A z-score for each component per grade is summed up for a final grade score. A district then adds up all the grade scores to get an overall score, per the report.
Perkiomen Valley School District educates more than 4,900 students across Perkiomen, Skippack, and Lower Frederick townships and Trappe, Collegeville, and Schwenksville boroughs. PVSD is comprised of eight schools, including a virtual K-12 school.
