TOWAMENCIN – Every year, the Pennsylvania Department of Education releases a School Performance Profile for each school in PA, which rates them on a scale from 0-100. Calculations for scoring are complex and include attendance rates, graduation rates, standardized test scores, faculty to student ratio, and the performing gap between groups of students who are expected to perform well and historically underperforming subgroups of students. North Penn High School scored its highest score in its history: 100.3%. (Note: the extra .3% is earned through AP exam scores.)

A high score does not simply serve to show off that NPHS is a high performing school; it increases property value and revenue in the area as more parents who wish to enroll their children in quality schools are more likely to move into the area. As a result, more diversity is brought into the community, as Todd Bauer, the principle at NPHS, explained.

“[The score] really impacts the North Penn community and it means that it will bring people to the area and continue to make North Penn a very diverse, different collection of people, which is to be celebrated”

Of course, Bauer does not expect NPHS to reach 100.3% every year. In fact, he expected the score to drop this year due to last year’s high result: 97.6%.

“I was surprised when the score came out” Bauer said. “Kids perform differently and different classes score differently on different tests… there are ebbs and flows to all these numbers.”

Moving forward, Bauer cautions against continuing the trends that has brought the high school to where it stands now, citing the ever-changing needs of students in our fast-paced digital age.

“It’s a moving target. Things change all the time, especially in education. The way to reach kids change. Kids change from year to year and from class to class, and so [the school needs] to be flexible with [its] methods and how [it reaches] those kids”

One of the ways the school is planning to continue moving forward is to provide chromebooks to every student next year, which Bauer explained will create a one-on-one digital learning environment.

What it all comes down to is such: in order to keep the score and school performance, as Bauer explained, change is necessary.

“If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse… If we become content and ride the coattails of this year then we will not be as successful. We need to continue to challenge ourselves and we need to continue to strive to get better,” Bauer noted.

Bauer gave kudos to teachers and students, whose work ultimately earned NPHS its high score.