School officials reflect on 2005 Adequate Yearly Progress results

By Michelle Ruckdaschel Pioneer Staff Writer

Now that state officials have announced the 2005 Adequate Yearly Progress results for Minnesota public schools, area school officials are weighing in.

“We’re just ecstatic with the results,” Bemidji Area Schools Superintendent Jim Hess said. “We’re just delighted with how well our students did.”

According to the Minnesota Department of Education, several area school districts made AYP while others failed to make the progress required annually by No Child Left Behind.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty and State Education Commissioner Alice Seagren announced the AYP and Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment results on Monday at the Minnesota State Fair. At that time, they also released the 2005 School Report Cards.

The MDE reported schools showed broad and systemic improvement. Also, the number of schools not making the required AYP dropped nearly 50 percent, the MDE reported.

Overall, the Bemidji School District made AYP this year.

“For a large school district in northern Minnesota, we really did shine,” said Hess, who attributes the students’ success to the district’s staff.

“Really, (they) deserve a big pat on the back,” Hess said.

He also cited the district’s attention to data. He said the district seriously examined data from previous years and then made some adjustments.

All 12 of the district’s schools listed in the 2005 report made AYP in participation, proficiency and graduation.

However, one of these schools – the Bemidji Middle School Alterative Learning Program – failed to make AYP in attendance, which was 79 percent. As a result, it did not make AYP. The school had made AYP the previous year.

Kathy Palm, director of curriculum and administrative services, said Bemidji’s Alternative Learning Program has improved since 2004 and has surpassed the 90 percent mark. Both attendance and graduation percentages listed in the 2005 AYP results are based on percentages from 2004.

Improving in the district this year was Bemidji High School. The school did not make AYP last year, but did this year.

Districtwide, the 2005 AYP results also show that American Indian students are achieving MCA proficiency, Palm said. She added that students receiving free and reduced lunch and special education students are achieving proficiency, as well. These were areas of concerns in the past, she said.

“This year, our results showed some great growth,” Palm said.

Hess said the district has a lot of work to continue to improve.

“We’re anxious to continue that good work,” he added.

Other area districts making AYP overall were Bagley, Blackduck, Clearbrook-Gonvick, Kelliher, Laporte, Schoolcraft Learning Community and TrekNorth High School.

The Cass Lake-Bena, Red Lake, Walker-Hackensack-Akeley and Voyageurs Expeditionary High School districts did not make AYP overall.

Because of the March 21 school shootings in Red Lake, Red Lake Schools were exempt from testing this year, said Jessie Montano, director of the NCLB Program in Minnesota.

The district, however, still did not meet AYP this year because its attendance – listed as 85 percent – did not meet the requirement. Attendance was the only area in which Red Lake was not exempt, Montano said.

Although Cass Lake-Bena Schools did not make AYP overall this year, Superintendent Todd Chessmore noted that the district’s elementary, middle and high schools all made AYP individually.

The district did not make AYP overall because its Area Learning Center, which served 108 at-risk students, did not make the required progress, he said.

“We’re working hard to meet the standards,” said Chessmore, adding that he believes the Area Learning Center it will make AYP in the future.

Meanwhile, he said he is pleased with the results of the other schools in the district.

“We are very happy,” Chessmore said. “We feel like we have an excellent school system. We’ve improved across the board, including our ALC.”

Kelliher School District Superintendent Terry Bartness said being prepared has helped the district to be successful in AYP.

He said the district, for example, gives second-grade through 10th-grade students the computerized Measures of Academic Progress test in the fall and spring. With speedy results, the teachers learn early the areas they need to work on with students, he said.

While making AYP this year, Bartness said the district will strive to achieve even more.

“The one area we want to work on is attendance,” he said. “We made AYP, but we feel that our attendance should be better than that.”

He said he wants to prepare students for the vocational world by instilling good attendance habits in school.

Two area charter schools made AYP this year – Schoolcraft Learning Community and TrekNorth High School. Both made AYP last year, as well.

“We’re pleased,” Schoolcraft Director Scott Anderson said.

While the school’s operation is built on state standards, it is able to maintain its focus on learning expeditions, he noted.

Additionally, Mike Munson, lead teacher at TrekNorth High School, said he was pleased with TrekNorth’s AYP results.

He said one the academic areas TrekNorth staff found that students struggled with early on was math. So, he said, the school made its math program more targeted to measure incremental progress.

“It’s paid off,” Munson said.

Another area charter school, Voyageurs Expeditionary High School, failed to make AYP, unlike its results last year.

Deborah Carlson-Doom, Voyageurs co-director, said the school did not make AYP this year because it did not meet the attendance requirement. The school’s attendance was listed at 89 percent.

Now that the school has moved from Concordia Language Villages to downtown Bemidji, Carlson-Doom believes attendance will improve. She said transportation was difficult for some of the students when the school was located 12 miles outside of Bemidji.

Both Red Lake and Walker-Hackensack-Akeley districts, which failed to make AYP two years in a row, need improvement, according to the MDE.

Once identified for improvement, the districts must each develop a two-year district improvement plan designed to improve the performance of subgroups not making AYP, according to the MDE.