State test scores for math and reading are up, but not enough for No Child Left Behind law. Find your school's test scores.
By EMILY JOHNS, GREGORY A. PATTERSON and GLENN HOWATT, Star Tribune
Last update: July 1, 2009 - 5:49 AM
The results of this year's statewide tests are in: Minnesota students performed slightly better on math and reading tests, but the gains won't be enough to prevent more schools from being added to the list of those falling behind under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments results were released today by the state Department of Education.
It is likely that for the first time, when the list is released in August, more than half the state's schools will be defined as not making adequate progress because their performance increases can't keep pace with rising targets.
"We're pleased that the scores are going up, but we just don't feel like we made enough growth," said David Heistad, director of research, evaluation and assessment for the Minneapolis schools.
Statewide, 64 percent of students were proficient on math tests, compared to 62 percent last year, and 72 percent were proficient on reading tests, compared to 71 percent last year.
Results "should only be one of many that parents and the public look at in evaluating whether their individual school is performing well," said Chas Anderson, deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education.
A 2014 deadline
According to the federal No Child Left Behind law, states must test how different student groups are faring. If one group -- such as poor students -- fails to meet state targets, the school is labeled as not making "adequate yearly progress."
For schools receiving Title I money, failure means penalties that increase over time, from having to offer transfers and tutoring, to restructuring an entire school. The required proficiency level increases each year -- by 2014, the law says, every student group in the country has to pass the tests.
A 2004 legislative auditor's report predicted that by 2014, somewhere between 80 to 100 percent of Minnesota's elementary schools would not meet targets.
"The reality is that you're constantly putting new kids into the system, so the whole idea of the benchmarks, it's widely believed now, is that it was a false system that was never going to be successful," said Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.
St. Paul Superintendent Meria Carstarphen, whose last day was Tuesday before moving to a job in Texas, brushed aside the controversy.
"We can talk about No Child Left Behind all day, and at the end of the day we still will not have done our jobs," to dramatically increase achievement, she said. "So long as the majority of our children are not proficient, we should keep working."
Student performance increased most on the 11th-grade math test and the 10th-grade reading test, portions of which students believed were required for graduation when they took the tests. The Legislature has since backed off that requirement for math.
The large Minnesota achievement gap showed slight signs of narrowing, with black students scoring some 34 percentage points below their white counterparts in reading, and 35 percentage points below in math, down from 36 last year in both categories.
Best and worst
According to a Star Tribune analysis of metro area schools, Twin Cities International Elementary charter school in Minneapolis and Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy, a charter school with campuses in Inver Grove Heights and Blaine, do the best in math and reading, respectively, with high numbers of students living in poverty.
Conversely, Insight School of Minnesota, an online high school run by the Brooklyn Center school district, and Lionsgate Academy charter school, a school for high-functioning autistic students, had the lowest math and reading scores, respectively, in the metro area for schools with fewer than 15 percent of students coming from low-income families.
Insight, which just finished its first year, has many students "that came to us because the traditional setting wasn't working for them," Principal John Huber said Tuesday. "Sixty-five percent of our students were at least one grade level behind when they came here, in math."
In Minneapolis, an initiative to improve schools on the North Side, which mostly serve African-American students, seems to be paying off in small amounts at the elementary schools.
Lucy Laney and Nellie Stone Johnson, elementary schools restructured three years ago, saw considerable gains, especially in math. At Lucy Laney, 18 percent of students were proficient in math this year, compared to 11 last year. Nellie Stone Johnson had 35 percent of students proficient in math, compared to 20 percent last year.
When the schools were restructured, "the only thing that was the same afterwards was the students," said Bernadeia Johnson, deputy superintendent in Minneapolis. Staff, leadership and curriculum all got a close look.
But scores are still low, and while the trend is encouraging, she said, "it's not substantive enough for us to do what we need to do to get all our students ready for college and post-secondary."
In the St. Paul district, students logged the third consecutive year of improvement in math, while reading scores remained relatively unchanged. The biggest gain occurred at North End Elementary School, where a student body that is 90 percent minority and 95 percent eligible for free or reduced lunches, scored a 17 percent gain in math scores.
School Principal Hamilton Bell attributed the gains to strong teaching, motivated students and family support.
"And we had a good math coach, too," Bell said.
Charter schools vary widely
The Star Tribune data analysis showed charter school results varied widely. The number of charter schools doing exceptionally well with low-income students was striking, as was the number of schools not doing so well with few students living in poverty.
"There is enormous variation among districts and charter schools," in how they perform, said Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota and a champion of charter schools.
Nathan pointed out, for example, that the Math and Science Academy charter school in Woodbury scored a perfect 100 percent of student proficiency in 10th grade reading and 91 percent in 11th grade math; while Lake Superior High School in Duluth scored 12 percent in reading and zero percent in math.
"We need to do a better job of learning from the best charter and district schools and of closing the ones that are not performing," he said.
This spring, the laws regulating charter schools underwent the biggest legislative overhaul they've seen since the state became the first to pass a charter school law in 1991. Anderson, of the state education department, said those legal changes should help charter schools replicate success.
In the end, Anderson said, whether a school is a charter school or a traditional public school, "the number one factor, if you take away the demographics, is really the effectiveness of their teachers."
In schools falling behind, she said, "there are adequate teachers, but they're not performing well as a school or a system. The teachers are largely not supported ... The system does not necessarily allow that teacher to be a good teacher."
No comments:
Post a Comment