Schools

Hopkins Reading Scores Soar, Math Scores Stumble

The Minnesota Department of Education released results of the annual math and reading exams Wednesday.

posted strong reading scores, but students across the district struggled in the math portion of this year’s annual standardized tests.

Third- through eighth-grade students and 10th-grade students took the reading portion of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments last spring. Grades three through eight and 11th grade took the math portion.

 

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Reading

This year’s reading results were a resounding success. Except for third grade, every level tested performed better than the state average—sometimes as much as 7 percentage points better. All of sixth-graders met at least some of the reading requirements and only four who weren’t proficient.

Every grade except for third grade and eighth grade also performed better than it did last year.

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Superintendent John Schultz credited much of the success to the aggressive way the district seeks to improve instruction, reviewing annually instead of every few years.

“We, as a district, don’t wait around for state testing and trends in education to change our curriculum,” Schultz said.

The district also uses other standardized tests called Measures of Academic Progress. Unlike the MCAs, these tests are taken twice a year and results are available within a week or two so teachers can target problem areas.

 

Math

However, some of the district’s math scores tempered the good news about reading. Third, fourth and seventh grades all fell behind the state average—by nearly nine percentage points in the case of third grade.

Those scores would have been even worse were it not for a few high-performing schools—, Meadowbrook and —that propped up the district average. In fourth grade math, for example, 79 percent of Glen Lake students tested proficient, while just 46 percent of students did.

The two schools in city of Hopkins boundaries consistently lagged by double-digit amounts.

Yet those schools— and Alice Smith—also serve students facing the biggest challenges. Both have above-average numbers of English-language learners and both have above-average numbers of students receiving free or reduced lunch—a common measure of poverty.

Alice Smith, for example, has a whopping 58 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced lunch. Districtwide, about 38 percent of students qualify. 

 

The Achievement gap

The scores also once again highlight the so-called “achievement gap” between white students and students of color—a phenomenon seen statewide. All of Hopkins’ lowest-performing schools had above-average numbers of students of color.

The persistent gap has been an ongoing cause of concern for both Hopkins School Board directors and state officials. 

“We continue to see a persistent disparity in achievement between students of color, students in poverty and their white counterparts,” Brenda Cassellius, Minnesota education commissioner, was quoted in a news release. “This achievement gap reinforces the urgent need to focus time, attention and resources to making sure all children achieve at high levels.”

But Diane Schimelpfenig—Hopkins director of teaching, learning, and assessment—said the district doesn’t want to be in the position of “blaming” a certain group of students. The schools focus on the needs of each individual student—whatever their unique circumstances.

Said Schultz: “I would never attribute a test score to a particular background. When we look at kids, we look at where they’re coming from individually. If we attribute it to those demographic qualities, then we will always have that as an excuse, and that’s not right.”

 

Explanations

Meanwhile, the district is digging deeper into the data to see what may have caused below-par math performance—a particularly vexing question because the MAP tests showed above-average math learning from fall to spring last year.

The low scores may be partly explained by tougher standards used for the first time for the third- through eighth-grade math tests. Statewide, sixth-grade math dropped nearly 19 percentage points.

Yet that doesn’t explain the poor performance relative to other districts, which also took the harder, new test for the first time.

 

Moving forward

Regardless of math scores that a district news release said were “not as high as the District had hoped,” - Hopkins officials see the MCA results as one more point to use in evaluating student instruction.

The newly launched professional learning communities—a new teaching structure that brings groups of teachers together to collaboratively help students achieve— have already begun discussing insights what they can learn from the test results. A third-grade professional learning community, for example, decided that their students need more practice with multi-step problems.

But the scores remain just one of many data points that also include other tests, teacher observations, classroom work and other details, Schultz said.

Said Schimelpfenig: “In our classrooms, we work with individual students and their families.”

 

What do the scores mean for “Adequate Yearly Progress” under the No Child Left Behind Act? .

to see each school’s reading and math scores.


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