The Pennsylvania Education Department released the latest round of PSSA and Keystone test results for 2025. Lehigh Valley schools placed near the top and close to the bottom of the lists for math and English proficiency.

The PSSAs are taken for math and English by students at grade levels 3 through 8, while the Keystone exam is taken by students at grade level 11. About 704,000 students took the elementary level exams and about 122,000 11th graders took the Keystone exam, which adds a biology component in addition to the language arts and algebra portions.

It’s elementary: PSSA results

The results were mixed throughout Pennsylvania and in the Lehigh Valley. Statewide, elementary level math scores inched up by 1.3 percentage points in math, but English proficiency dropped 4.5 percent, to 48.5 percent in this year’s round of tests.

The 36,000 primary school pupils tested in the 17 public school districts in the Lehigh Valley echoed those trends: Math scores rose by 2 points to 41.6 percent proficiency in math, but dropped 3.9 points to 47.8 percent proficiency in English.

The following chart compares statewide combined results for 2021, 2024 and 2025. The data for 2021 were significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall participation in testing dropped by more than one-third, and the results that were published showed the result of learning loss from school closures.

This map shows PSSA results and rankings in both math and English for 499 of the 500 districts throughout the state, comparing 2024 and 2025 results. Montgomery County’s Bryn Athyn School District, with one of Pennsylvania’s smallest populations at 1,300 people, has no public schools within its 1.9 square miles, and so does not get included in most reports from the education department.

The top-rated districts in the two local counties were Southern Lehigh (70% combined proficiency), Parkland (67.8%) and Nazareth Area (62.1%), which ranks them 31, 38 and 69 out of the 499 districts reporting. At the opposite end of the scale, the Allentown School District ranked 484 of 499 districts with its combined proficiency of 16%. It was followed by Catasauqua Area (31.4%) and Bethlehem Area (33.2%), which ranked 435 and 420, respectively.

The test results were published both on an aggregated district level and on individual school building and grade levels, but any group with fewer than 11 students had the results suppressed for privacy reasons, so The Morning Call examined only down to the building level for all grades and all students. The following two tables show math and English results for 113 Lehigh Valley elementary and middle schools, including charter schools.

English proficiency ranged from a low of 9.1% at Innovative Arts Academy Charter School, which was 3.3% lower than in 2024, to a high of 80.6% at Lower Nazareth Elementary School, which jumped 7.8% from the previous year. Liberty Bell Elementary in Southern Lehigh was the only other local school to score above 80% in English proficiency.

The biggest swings in English scores both were in Easton Area schools: March Elementary dropped almost 15 percentage points from 2024 while Tracy Elementary gained 8.1% year-over-year.

The math scores at Lehigh Valley schools were even more uneven, spanning from 0.6% proficiency at Innovative Arts Academy to 86.6% at Liberty Bell Elementary, a 7% improvement over 2024. Innovative Arts was the only school with less than 1% proficiency, but Allentown’s Trexler Middle School and the Arts Academy Charter School both came in under 5%.

Six area schools topped 80% of student who were proficient or advanced.

The swings in math scores ranged from a drop of 19% at Wilson Area’s Avona Elementary to a gain of 19.5% at East Penn’s Lincoln Elementary.

When aggregated as weighted averages, Lehigh Valley’s 11 public charter schools had 34.9% of their students showing Language Arts proficiency this year, while the 102 district schools had 48.1% proficiency. Combined, the 113 schools had 46.8% proficiency in English this year.

The same calculations on math scores show the 11 charters had an aggregate 24.1% of their 3,869 test takers showing proficient or advanced mastery of math compared with 41.8% of the 35,600 district school students who were tested at the end of April. When combined, 40.1% of the Lehigh Valley’s 39,466 test takers were proficient or above this year, a total of about 15,830 math masters.

Upgrading: The Keystone results

About 6,900 Lehigh Valley 11th graders in 26 district and charter schools spent three days taking the Keystone exams this year, joining 113,900 others across Pennsylvania who sweated through the literature, algebra and biology modules, either online or with paper and pencil.

The results in literature and algebra were less volatile than the comparable PSSA scores: While fewer than half the students who took the algebra test were judged to be proficient or advanced, the proficiency rate rose 2.7% from last year, moving from 41.6% to 44.3% this year. Proficiency in literature was 62.1% this year, a 1.1% decline from the same test in 2024.

When combining the two tests, the weighted average shows that 53.2% of students were proficient, a 0.4% uptick from 2024.

Calculating the same average for all three subjects, 51.9% of the test takers — almost 63,000 11th graders — were proficient this year, virtually unchanged from a year ago.

Roberto Clemente Charter School saw its literature proficiency on the Keystones plummet 35.5 percentage points to 0%. The next largest drop in the two counties was 18.3% at Dieruff High School in Allentown, landing the school with 31.7% proficiency. The largest rise was a 10% increase at Lincoln Leadership Academy Charter School, where current literature proficiency is 38.5%. The highest literature score was 87.8% at the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts, the only local school to break 80%.

Roberto Clemente also had the biggest drop in its algebra score, with none of the 25 takers judged proficient or advanced, whereas last year, 21.4% of its 11th graders were proficient. On the flip side, Pen Argyl Area High School saw its algebra scores jump 15.6% to 55.2% this year. The top math score was 65.8% at Northwestern Lehigh High School.

The three tables below show the results for algebra, biology and literature for the 26 district and charter high schools in Lehigh and Northampton counties.

This map shows Keystone results in algebra and literature for 497 of the 500 public school districts. As noted, Bryn Athyn has no public schools. In addition, Beaver County’s Midland Borough School District and Saint Clair in Schuylkill have elementary schools, but no high schools, so nobody takes the Keystone exam.

Ten districts had higher than 90% proficiency in literature this year. The top three were Upper St. Clair in Allegheny County (94.5%), Mt. Lebanon, also in Allegheny (94.1%) and Lower Merion in Montgomery County (93.5%). All three districts improved their scores over 2024. The lowest literature score was 12.5% in Westmoreland’s Monessen City district, which saw its score drop by more than 13 percentage points from 2024.

None of the reporting districts had more than 90% of their high schoolers judged proficient or advanced in algebra. The top three districts were all in the western part of the state: Fox Chapel Area in Allegheny County (89.8%), Penn-Trafford in Westmoreland County (86.5%) and Fairview School District in Erie County (85.1%). The lowest math scores were found nearby in Allegheny’s Sto-Rox (1.7%) and Monessen City (2.5%).

Overall math proficiency was 47.2% this year for high schoolers, a 0.7% drop from last year. The weighted average Literature proficiency rate was 64.2%, down 1.3% from 2024.