School District’s Annual Report: What St. Michael Needs to Know

The top priority is increasing student achievement, and specifically to score in the top 25 percent of schools in the state on standardized testing. At least for this specific goal, it appears the district has arrived- and then some.

In Monday evening’s presentation to the school board, school staff Dr. Ann-Marie Foucault, Jim Pothoff and Teri Johnson communicated their annual report on curriculum, instruction and student achievement. In addition to discussing strategic goals-covering a variety of issues from communication to revenue to student achievement- and methods to achieve them, the presenters had encouraging rankings to report on how well STMA fared compared to the rest of the state’s schools on last spring’s MCA tests.

The school district’s MCA test scores show them to rank in the top 25 percent in the state’s rankings for 11 of the 14 testing categories, and two of the three categories that fell below the 25 percent goal were in the top 27th percentile. Only third grade math scores lagged behind, scoring in the top 35 percentile in the state. Eighth grade’s math scores shone, however, scoring in the top 5 percentile in the state. The resulting average from last spring’s tests was 17.5 percent, blowing past the district goal of being in the top 25 percent.

 “Every year we are improving, raising that bar,” said district assessment director Jim Pothoff, noting that nearly every group has improved from the scores they achieved the year before. “There’s still areas where we could improve, but I think we are heading in the right direction.”

“Compared to other schools, our students are grasping more information at a faster pace,” superintendent Dr. Jim Behle added.

While it’s important to test student knowledge and modify instruction to help them succeed, the downside to having all of this information on student scores is the amount of class time dedicated to giving the standardized tests. It’s nothing to sneeze at: last year alone, the STMA school district administered 15,500 assessments, not including all of the individual assessments given by each teacher on their own subject matter. Over 7,000 of these tests were Minnesota assessments required by federal law, and over 700 were for Minnesota’s GRAD requirements, which require that students pass a standardized math, writing and reading exam in order to receive a high school diploma in the state. The annual report, found here, goes into detail on each type of testing, its purpose and recent scores in the latter two-thirds of the document.

“You get to point where, really … how much are we testing these kids?” Behle said.

Behle placed the blame for the large number of tests at the feet of the state’s current standardized tests, the MCA tests. He said additional tests are needed beyond these state-mandated tests to actually measure growth and look for areas where students need extra help. This is why the St. Michael-Albertville also administers MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) assessments to its students. The district has stated before that it would ideally like to see the MAP testing serve as the district’s accountability in lieu of MCAs so not as much time would be needed for assessments.