Sometimes the numbers and labels don't tell the whole story.

Those are the sentiments expressed by a number of suburban school officials regarding the recently released Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exam scores for math and reading.

"So many people look at those numbers when they are published and make a decision that a school is failing. But that's not necessarily the case," said Michael Brinkos, superintendent of the McKeesport Area School District.

Dr. Brinkos said the district has quality instructors, but "We have a greater challenge because we have to meet the needs of a diverse population."

McKeesport Area and two other Allegheny County school districts, Sto-Rox and Wilkinsburg, did not make adequate yearly progress -- known as AYP -- under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, based on math and reading tests, attendance or graduation.

In addition, three other schools need to make targets for two consecutive years to be fully reaching AYP.

The remaining 37 districts in the county made AYP, but about 20 of them had one or more schools that did not. Some were in such high-achieving districts as North Allegheny and Fox Chapel Area, where the special education subgroup did not meet targets in some schools.

Results from the PSSA were released this month, including those for math and reading, which were given in the spring in grades 3-8 and 11.

Students were rated in four performance levels: below basic, basic, proficient and advanced.

Statewide, Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak said this year's results were the best ever, with 95 percent of districts and 78 percent of schools meeting their AYP targets.

Locally much of the news was good as well. All public school districts in Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties made AYP except for Monessen City in Westmoreland County.

State targets for this year were for 63 percent of students to score proficient or above in reading and 56 percent in math. Targets also could be met using some statistical measures which give credit for improvement or growth even if the performance was below the specified level.

School districts had to meet targets based on grade spans, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.

In addition to overall achievement, both schools and districts had to meet targets for various racial and economic subgroups if there were at least 40 students in the subgroup.

If they missed just one target, they did not make AYP.

Because schools and districts received credit for improvement or growth, some districts made AYP even though their scores were considerably below the state targets for proficiency.

One dramatic example is the Duquesne City School District, which made AYP, where just 6.3 percent of the high school students scored proficient or above in math and 25 percent in reading. Duquesne no longer operates a high school; its students go to West Mifflin Area and East Allegheny.

There are some patterns in the PSSA results.

Some districts, such as Penn Hills, McKeesport and Sto-Rox, have racial gaps in the scores, with significantly more white students achieving proficient scores than African-American students in some levels or schools.

Some school administrators noticed a pattern of math scores dropping as students hit middle school and dropping more in high school.

And, not surprisingly, students overall and in the various subgroups tend to hit and exceed the targets in affluent districts. Those in lower-income areas fall short of the targets more often or make AYP through one of the state's designations rather than hitting the designated performance target.

One exception to the pattern appears to be the charter school Propel McKeesport, where 85 percent of the students qualify for free lunches and 73 percent are minorities and yet their scores exceeded the state's targets and rivaled those of some affluent districts.

At Propel McKeesport, 76.5 percent of students scored proficient or above in reading and 94.6 percent in math. The percentages were close to the same for white students and African-American students.

Propel's three other schools -- Homestead, East and Montour -- also met their targets, though Propel Homestead is designated as "making progress" because it didn't make AYP the previous year. But students at the other schools did not score as high as Propel McKeesport.

Perhaps the greatest frustration among some school officials regarding the PSSA exams, is the difficulty they face in helping special education subgroups meet proficiency targets.

Educators said it's a difficult challenge, given that most special needs students have to take the same test as their peers in regular education classes. In an effort to help improve scores, some districts are including special education students in regular math and reading classes in hopes that it will improve learning.

McKeesport Area has seen improvement by trying this at the high school level, Dr. Brinkos said, though the subgroup there was not large enough to be measured for AYP purposes.

Now McKeesport Area plans to try it at other levels.

Likewise, Wilkinsburg will include special education students in regular classrooms with extra support, said Superintendent Archie Perrin.

Since 2002, the state has allowed the most severely cognitively disabled students to take a modified annual assessment, called the Pennsylvania Alternative System of Assessment. No more than 1 percent of a district's advanced or proficient scores can come from PASA results.

This spring, the state will administer a modified math assessment, which will be called PSSA-M for students who don't meet the criteria for PASA but meet other criteria. No more than 2 percent of a school district's advanced or proficient scores will be able to come from the new test.

School officials, such as those in North Allegheny, where the special education subgroup at the high school did not make AYP, hope this will help their districts to meet the targets for special education students.

"We hope this will be a positive first step towards addressing this complex issue," said Arleen Wheat, assistant superintendent of special education and pupil services at North Allegheny, in a prepared statement.

The North Allegheny district uses interim testing, remediation classes and individualized student support to help the special education students make progress, Dr. Wheat said.

In the statement, Dr. Wheat noted that while North Allegheny High School special education students did not hit their targets in reading or math, their scores were "significantly" higher than those of 11th grade special education students across the state.

However, Dr. Wheat said that "consideration of how a student's disability impacts his or her performance on an assessment" has been an issue for school districts.

Following is a closer look at the issues facing the Allegheny County districts that have been identified as struggling:

The district made AYP, but its only school, the Duquesne Learning Center, referred to as the Duquesne Consolidated School District by the state, did not.

At the elementary level, though scores are still significantly lower than the state targets in grades 3-5, students made strides in both reading and math. Of the overall student population in those grades, 27.5 percent scored proficient or above, an 11.6 percentage point increase from the previous year. In math, 40.1 percent scored proficient or above, a 7 percentage point increase.

But as with some other districts, the academic decline starts in the middle school. In grades 6-8 the district missed its targets in reading and math for students overall and black students, and in math for special education and economically disadvantaged students.

High school students, who go outside the district for classes, hit the target in reading. But they missed the target in math, with just 6 percent scoring proficient or above.

In addition, at the high school level, Duquesne students missed the target on test participation.

Cheryl Fogarty, superintendent of record for the Duquesne district, said district officials, working with those at East Allegheny and West Mifflin high schools recognized that Duquesne students were heading to high school with little exposure to algebra.

Since then, Duquesne's math specialists have worked to include algebraic concepts into the curriculum for the lower grades, including grades 5 and 6.

In addition, the district this year added a curriculum coordinator who will review the math curriculum.

The district, during the past academic year, also has been working toward improving reading scores through the use of a coach and reading specialists. That appeared to have paid off in gains in reading proficiency levels at the elementary level.

The middle school scores do not show such gains and in fact the proficiency rates dropped somewhat.

Dr. Fogarty said district officials expected that the younger students would score better than those in middle school, but officials did not expect to see the size of drop-off in scores that occurred at the middle school level.

The district also is hoping for improvement in its reading scores through the Success for All program it is implementing this fall with the Educational Leadership Initiative of the University of Pittsburgh.

At McKeesport Area High School, students overall did not hit their targets in either math or reading. When the results were broken down by subgroup, the white students made AYP using the confidence interval in reading and African American students made it through safe harbor.

The confidence interval gives leeway for statistical error. Safe harbor recognizes a reduction of at least 10 percent of those performing below proficient over the previous year.

Neither racial group hit the targets in math, and among the African-American students just 13.7 percent of students scored proficient or above in math. Among the white students, 30.3 percent scored proficient or above.

Founder's Hall and Cornell Middle School students in the special education subgroup did not hit the targets.

At George Washington Elementary, the school did not make AYP for its reading scores for students overall or among its African-American and economically disadvantaged students and at Centennial Elementary, students in the economically disadvantaged group did not make AYP in reading.

One effort the district is making to increase proficiency among special education students is to increase their inclusion time in mainstream classes for reading and math.

That practice already has started at the high school, where district officials are seeing some progress among special education students, Dr. Brinkos said.

Michael Matta, director of federal and state programs and instructional support, said district officials were disappointed in the scores from Centennial and George Washington and plan to change the way reading is taught at those schools.

Students had been grouped by ability level, but now they will be placed in groups of students of varying ability, as they are at White Oak Elementary, where students overall exceeded the state's targets for proficiency in math and reading. The hope is that lower-performing students will be able to learn skills from their higher-performing classmates.

Test scores from White Oak Elementary were a bright spot in the PSSA results for the district, officials said. At White Oak, 84.6 percent of students scored proficient or above in reading and 96.9 percent scored proficient or above at math.

The really good news in McKeesport Area is that math scores across the elementary level are exceeding the state target, with 71 percent scoring at or above proficient in grades 3-5. That percentage drops at the middle school level to 63.2 percent and then dramatically falls at the high school level to 23.7 percent.

Dr. Brinkos called the drop-off at the high school level "discouraging," but one that mirrors national trends.

One effort the district is making to correct the downward spiral is evaluating the math curriculum to make sure there are no gaps from the elementary level up through algebra, which is were student difficulties tend to surface.

The Penn Hills School District made AYP as a district, but four of its schools -- the high school, Linton Middle School and Penn-Hebron and Forbes elementary schools -- did not.

At the high school, students overall, African-American students and economically disadvantaged students did not hit the targets in reading or math.

At Linton Middle School, special education students did not hit the mark in math and at Penn Hebron the same group missed in reading. At Forbes Elementary, economically disadvantaged students missed the target in reading.

Penn Hills officials said they will review the curriculum and likely increase the use of team teaching, and place more than one teacher in some classrooms.

They also plan to standardized the curriculum to make sure that the course content is the same for every student. "We want to make sure that regardless of what Algebra I class you are in, the assessment and the content are the same," said high school Principal Darci Gatti.

At the high school, the district has developed plans to address the individual needs of juniors who are aren't proficient on the interim tests given by the district, said William McClarnon, director of secondary education.

In addition, any student in the Penn Hills district who is not scoring proficient on the state tests and is involved in an extracurricular activity, must attend a 90-minute tutorial each week in order to remain involved in an activity.

"The athletic director has put that mandate on the student athletes and coaches, and the district is working on getting transportation for the students," Mr. McClarnon said.

The district did not make AYP this year because of its graduation rate. It fell from 80.47 percent the previous year to 79.34 percent this spring and was below the state target of 80 percent.

In addition, Sto-Rox Middle School did not make AYP because its special education students did not hit the target in reading.

But there was still good news on the academic front as the district's students hit all academic targets with the exception of the middle school special education subgroup and made significant improvements in math scores at the middle and high schools.

However, the majority of targets were hit by using one of the alternative methods.

At the high school, there were 12-percentage-point gains in proficiency in math among students overall and white students and a 21.5 percentage point increase among economically disadvantaged students.

At the middle school, there was a 14-percentage-point increase in math proficiency among students overall, a 12-percentage-point increase for white students and a 19-percentage-point increase for economically disadvantaged students.

Twenty-eight percent of the district's students are in special education, which can make hitting targets more challenging. "It is more difficult to meet goals when you have a preponderance of special needs students, but that's no excuse," said Superintendent Fran Serenka.

She said the district's goal is to meet the targets for the group by moving "those children forward through one year of growth. For some of them a year of growth might be 20 new vocabulary words, and we need to be able to attain that."

Dr. Serenka said the district has implemented reading strategies at the secondary level, designed to get students to gain the fluency and comprehension skills they did not get in elementary school, and will be looking at the reading skills of each individual student.

She said the reading scores at the elementary level show that the current instructional program is working.

"We're doing things right here," Dr. Serenka said. "We just have to get some of the older kids up to where they should be."

Wilkinsburg's three elementary schools all met AYP, but the academic decline started at the middle school. Neither the middle school nor high school made AYP.

At the middle school, students overall and African-American and economically disadvantaged students did not meet their targets in math. At the high school, those same groups missed their goals in both math and reading, missing all six academic goals.

The high school scores were significantly lower than the state targets. For students overall, just 26.6 percent scored proficient or above in reading and 20.2 percent in math. While reading scores were up slightly, math scores were down by 2.4 percentage points from the previous year.

Superintendent Archie Perrin said his district is focusing on "systemic changes" rather than "quick fixes."

"Systemic change takes time, but pays off in the end," Mr. Perrin said.

For the past two years, students in seventh and eighth grades have had individual "student improvement plans" in math and reading. Student progress is reviewed on an ongoing basis and the plans are adjusted at least once every nine weeks, Mr. Perrin said. Those plans follow students to the high school.

Also, at the high school, similar plans will be created for 11th-grade students. In addition, a special emphasis will be placed on math at the high school this year.

Districtwide, teachers are involved in professional development that focuses on individualized instruction, co-teaching and inclusion of special education students. The focus for the year is Teaching Matters.

The district posted notable gains at its elementary and intermediate levels, hitting all targets and posting increases in the number of students scoring proficient or above in all categories except for reading among white students in grades 6-8, where there was a slight decrease.

Woodland Hills Junior High School did not make AYP, as it missed eight of its 10 academic targets.

In 2008, the district created Woodland Hills Junior High School by combining students from the former East Junior High School in Turtle Creek with the former West Junior High in Swissvale.

Because a new school was formed, the state Education Department did not compare students 2007-2008 PSSA results to last year's result so the school could not receive any credit for improvement. At the same time, it could not fall into a stronger category than "warning."

Students overall as well as the African-American, special education and economically disadvantaged subgroups did not hit their targets in reading or math.

Woodland Hills Senior High School, on the other hand, did not make AYP but made substantial gains from the previous year. The high school hit nine of its 10 academic targets, missing only in the area of math among special education students.

That's up from the previous year, when it made just two of its 10 academic targets. The most substantial gains were among the school's African American and economically disadvantaged students. Curriculum coordinator Norman Catalano said those groups make up a large portion of the school's population.

Mr. Catalano said the main reason for the progress in the schools is a more individualized approach to teaching through which teachers analyze the needs of each student and design instruction to meet those needs.