When Pennsylvania released yearly school progress reports earlier this month, more than a dozen Mercer County area schools were listed as falling below state standards.

They were among 1,300 schools across the state that failed to meet standards for attendance, graduation rates, reading and writing test passing rates, participation and inclusion of minority and economically disadvantaged children.

Now, due to faulty data collection and reporting and mistakes, the state has removed some 55 schools from academic warning lists, and corrected information for nearly 90 others.

The corrections and appeals aren't done yet, according to Brian Christopher, deputy press secretary for the Department of Education. Christopher said decisions will be made on corrections and appeals until Sept. 4.

"There are 3,000 schools in Pennsylvania," Christopher said. "There are a lot of different situations."

There are many places where mistakes could be made in the data collection and reporting process, he said.

"First we have the schools collecting the data, and then a state contractor interprets the data and writes a report," he said. "Then they write a report, and yet another report comes from that. There are many places for mistakes to sneak in."

Another point of confusion, Christopher said, was that it was not clear when the reports were released that the state should round up percentages for participation, graduation and attendance requirements.

The bar for those categories was set at 95 percent: 95 percent of all students in the tested grades must take the tests; 95 percent of all seniors must graduate; and grade schools must have a 95 percent attendance rate.

In the first report, Christopher said, the state didn't round up from 94.5 to 95 percent, which would move several schools from the "warning" list to the "meets standards" category.

Schools in Mercer County that were listed on the "Needs Improvement" list, according to the original state report, are: Farrell High, Greenville Junior-Senior High, George Junior Republic, Hickory High, Jamestown Junior-Senior High, Lakeview High, Reynolds Elementary, Reynolds Junior-Senior High, Reynolds Elementary, Musser Elementary, Sharon Junior-Senior High, West Hill Elementary and West Middlesex Junior-Senior High.

Four area schools were on the "School Improvement 1" list, meaning this is the second year in a row they have not met all of the state-required goals for yearly improvement. Those schools were Farrell Elementary, Keystone Education Center and Mercer Junior-Senior High and Wilmington Area Middle School.

Many of the schools in Mercer County and the surrounding area have appealed the state designations or asked for corrections in data used to make the designations (see sidebar). Lakeview and West Middlesex school districts will not be appealing their state designations, according to the superintendents for the two districts.

According to the state, schools can appeal based on special circumstances, significant growth and incomplete data, among other reasons.

The state study, intended to bring Pennsylvania in line with the No Child Left Behind Act, tracks year-to-year progress for schools.

Reading and math scores from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests are used to judge a school's academic effectiveness. For a school to be judged effective, 45 percent of the students must get proficient or higher scores on the state reading test, and 35 percent on the state math test. Those percentages increase annually with a statewide goal of 100 percent proficiency for all students in math and reading by 2014.

Students in grades five, eight and 11 were tested for the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 study.

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