Annual Report Has Positive News For Roseville Schools

Despite falling short in meeting goals set in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Roseville District 623 can take pride in overall student performance by other measures of academic proficiency, according to the District’s Annual Report on Curriculum, Instruction and Student Achievement.

The upside:

The district graduation rate remains high, with 98 percent of students passing state-required tests in math, reading and writing. 

Tests measuring academic progress (MAP) in grades 2-8 show that Roseville’s students performed above the national average.

And, high school students performed exceptionally well on ACT tests, which are used by many colleges as entrance exams. 

A high percentage of students – 76 percent – participated in the test, which includes English, mathematics, reading and science. Roseville Area High School students scored above both the state and national levels.  The composite score for Roseville students was 23.6, compared to 22.9 for Minnesota and 21.1 nationally.

Finally, Roseville students performed higher than the state average in many areas of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, the primary measure of a school’s progress in meeting No Child Left Behind goals.  Roseville students outperformed the state average in percentage of students proficient in reading in grades 5, 6 and 10.

Roseville students outperformed the state average in math proficiency in grades 5, 6 and 11. And, they outperformed the state average of students who were performing at the highest achievement level in four out of seven grades in reading and five out of seven grades in math.

Yet, despite these successes, only three of the district’s 10 schools made adequate yearly progress under NCLB.  That’s because all students – and all subgroups of students—must meet 100 percent of NCLB goals.

“The Minnesota NCLB assessment measures student results and issues a pass or fail pronouncement,” said Superintendent John Thein in the report’s introduction.  “One missed assessment cell [subgroup of students] and you are labeled ‘failing.’  The assessment does not take into consideration if the student is from a disadvantaged family, comes from a home where English is a second language of if the student has switched schools three times in the past year.”

The board approved the Annual Report on Curriculum, Instruction and Student Achievement at its meeting Tuesday.

The document, mandated by state law for all school districts, is a report to the community on “continuous improvement policies and practices.”  It describes equity and achievement goals for the district and explains a variety of tests which measure achievement in such areas as math, reading, writing, language, and college readiness.