Tyrone High School Leads the State in Another Academic Measure

By McKenzie Johnson, Features Editor|January 10, 2018

In 2015, Tyrone received one of the most prestigious awards given to a public school, a National Blue Ribbon Award from the US Department of Education. Last year, TAHS was ranked third out of 653 high schools in Pennsylvania in PVAAS growth.  Earlier this school year, Tyrone High school’s score of 95.2 on the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s school performance profiles was head and shoulders above other schools in Blair County. Now, for the third time since 2012, Tyrone High School is ranked first in the state in PVAAS growth.

PVAAS stands for Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System and is a statewide system used to track the growth students make beyond what statistical models predict they should make. PVAAS uses data from the annual Keystone Exams to determine school rank.

“PVAAS is a way that the state measures how much more students learned on their Keystones than they were predicted to learn based on how much they learned on previous PSSA tests,” said  Tyrone English teacher Stephen Everhart.

According to Everhart, Tyrone has been near the top of the rankings ever since PVAAS was implemented.

Teachers and students prepare long in advance for the Keystone tests to be sure that they will know the material before the testing day.

“There are a number of ways that I try to get our students prepared for the Biology Keystone Exam. To start, the content and tests for the course are aligned with the assessment anchors,” said 10th-grade biology teacher Beth Cannistraci, “The students will also take practice tests, that the state releases, as we near the biology Keystone testing date. Other factors such as different engagement strategies, an online classroom, and high expectations also play a role.”

One of the methods math teachers at Tyrone uses to achieve such high scores is the Get More Math program. The Get More Math program is used by Algebra I teachers to prepare students for the Keystones.

“It is a computerized program that differentiates instruction for each student. The students are all in the same lesson for the first period during instruction of the new concepts, but after they complete the assigned lesson, the program puts them into mixed review where it will feed them the problems that they individually struggle with,” said TASD math teacher Tiffany Smith.

Teachers and students have worked hard for this achievement, and it has paid off.

“This is by far my favorite part of teaching. Students come in with low confidence in their mathematical abilities and by the end of the course, they are solving multi-step word problems. The growth is amazing and it is the best part of this job. The improvement they see is setting them up for success in future math classes and their long-term education so it should not be taken lightly,” said Smith.

However, no matter how good the teachers are, it all comes down to the commitment of the students to learn.

“It’s fun to teach a bunch of winners every year—and we’re blessed to have brilliant, caring teachers who know how to get measurable results and are driven to help all kids. When you look across the other 500 high schools in Pennsylvania, you realize that this level of drive is exceptional.  Our kids inspire us with their effort, which makes us want to try even harder to help them,” said Everhart.