See Pittsburgh area's school districts ranked by budget - Pittsburgh Business Times (2024)

The Business Times List of Pittsburgh-area School Districts, ranked by budget, was part of the 2022 Guide to Western Pennsylvania Schools.

Pittsburgh Public Schools, of course, remains the largest school district in the region by a wide margin. PPS’s budget of about $666 million is more than three and a half times the next-largest district, North Allegheny, at $183 million. PPS has just over 20,000 students, compared to North Allegheny’s 8,500.

Overall, the 105 school districts in Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties had budgets for 2021-22 totaling $5.867 billion, up 3.1% from $5.69 billion for 2020-21. Overall enrollment at these 105 districts was down about 250 to 269,281. Enrollment in the region is down about 2.9% since 2019-20, prepandemic.

Three of the five largest school districts by budget performed quite well in the rankings in the 2022 Guide to Western Pennsylvania Schools. North Allegheny ranked No. 7, Seneca Valley, the third-largest district by budget was No 20 in the rankings based on three years of test scores, and Mt. Lebanon School District, the fourth-largest in the region, ranked No. 3 in the Business Times Honor Roll Ranking of Pittsburgh-area districts. The No. 1 school district in the rankings was Upper St. Clair School District, the 15th-largest by budget.

This is the 17th time the Business Times has compiled its annual school rankings. Last year, because there were no standardized tests in 2020, the Guide to Southwestern Pennsylvania Schools featured the top-scoring schools form the previous decade.

Upper St. Clair was also No. 1on the rank of the top-scoring districts statewide. 2022 Guide to Western Pennsylvania Schools, thetop districts discussed and how they kept scores high. But it was a year like no other, with many waivers given to high school students for the Keystone exams and opt-outs at all-time highs for testing at all grades. Superintendents from around the region offered their feelings on the this year's scores full of complexities and missing data points that make it challenging to compare to prior years.

Due to incomplete data for Keystone exams statewide, those results were not included in this year’s formula. Any district that did not have complete data from 2022 for the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests given to third through eighth graders was not ranked. Districts that do not offer all grades are also not ranked.

For more:ContactSherri Darpinoatsdarpino@bizjournals.comor 412-208-3848 to order a print edition of the Guide to Southwestern Pennsylvania Schools, which includes local Honor Roll, the state rank, the top-scoring districts in grades three through eight and a look at how the districts rank when economics is also taken into account, known as the overachievers rank. Also check back for more content online in coming days and weeks.