Roseville School Board Continues Review of Student Achievement

The Roseville District 623 School Board continued its extensive review of student achievement at a study session Tuesday, with results revealing many positives but also a growing gap in some performance between minority and white students.

Board members reviewed a draft of the district's “Monitoring Report: Engaging, Supporting and Challenging Each Student to Make Significant Annual Academic Growth.”

The report measures student achievement in three areas: academic growth, as measured by the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Measures of Academic Progress (MAP); proficiency, as measured by the Minnesota Comprehensive Achievement Tests, and attendance.

The report shows the district ranks in the top 10 percent nationally in mathematics growth (progress students make from the start to the end of the school year) and in the top 15 percent nationally in reading growth.

The district’s students also have consistently scored at a higher level on MCAs in math and reading, though at a lesser extent this year, in part because of a new, more difficult version in mathematics, the MCA III, which was given to students in grades 3-8.  Students took the test electronically for the first time this year as well.

Attendance remains very high for all students in the district (96 percent), and for all schools, with the exception of Fairview Alternative High School.

Despite these positive figures, racial disparities in achievement levels still are a  concern to district officials. The achievement disparity in mathematics between white students and students of color “took quite a spike” with the introduction of the more rigorous MCA III, the report said.  In reading, where students took the same MCAII test, the disparity decreased for the first time in four years.

Addressing these disparities is becoming more critical as District 623 becomes more diverse. 

In 2005-06, white students comprised 71.2 percent of the student population in the district; that percentage dropped to 60 percent in 2010-11.  At that rate of change, students of color will comprise 50 percent of the total district enrollment in five years, the report states.

The district and state share similar patterns of ethnic change, but the rate of change is faster in District 623.

Furthermore, number of students who do not speak English as a primary language is increasing a level twice the rate of the state. 

“Given this observation, it will be important to track these subgroups…to get a true comparative picture of district and state trends,” the report states.

To read the full report, go to www.isd623.org/schoolboard/documents/BoardPacket.pdf.