Summary:
The city of Atglen, Pennsylvania is home to 4 schools that serve students from elementary through high school, all part of the Octorara Area School District. While the schools share some common challenges, such as below-average test scores and high rates of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, a few standout schools demonstrate the potential for improvement across the district.
Octorara Primary LC and Octorara Intermediate School both have relatively low student-teacher ratios, which may contribute to their stronger performance on PSSA tests compared to the district and state averages. In contrast, Octorara Area Junior/Senior High School struggles, with only 17.8% of students proficient or better in Algebra I and 43.2% in Biology on the Keystone Exams.
The district's diverse student population, with significant Hispanic/Latino and African American representation, faces socioeconomic challenges, as evidenced by the high rates of free/reduced lunch recipients across all schools. While this may be a contributing factor to the lower academic performance, the data also suggests that there are opportunities for improvement, such as by sharing best practices from the higher-performing schools like Octorara Elementary School, which ranked 918 out of 1,534 Pennsylvania elementary schools and performed relatively well on PSSA tests.
Thank you for your feedback!