Great Expectations School (GES) has been named a “Reward School” and Sawooth Elementary a “Celebration” school by the Minnesota Department of Education, which released its 2015 accountability results on September 1.
The list included schools that receive Title 1, or federal poverty aid, and schools that made significant growth in closing their learning gaps.
While Great Expectations was named at the top of the list, Sawtooth Elementary, like other top performing elementary schools, has demonstrated it has narrowed achievement gaps, and can apply to be named a Rewards School next year.
Schools were judged on the state’s Multiple Measurement Ratings (MMR), and Focus Ratings (FR), and once those ratings were tallied, GES was designated a Reward School.
The MMR is scored 0 to 100 percent for all schools in the state and includes data on proficiency, growth, achievement gap reduction, and graduation rates.
The Focus Rating is also scored 0-100 percent and includes data on proficiency and growth only for students of color, special education students, students in poverty and English learners.
Sawtooth scored 57.68 on the MMR and 78.39 percent on the Focus Rating. Great Expectations scored 87.18 on the MRR and 82.92 on the FR.
Reward Schools represent the top 15 percent of Title I schools in the state, based on Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment-based measures of student academic proficiency, test score growth, and academic achievement gaps.
GES’s fiscal 2015 MMR of 87.18 percent is in the top 5 percent of all elementary schools in the state (although the school serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade, GES is considered an elementary school).
“We focus on addressing individual student needs, not on raising test scores,” says GES Director Peter James, adding, “Of course, we believe academic success should result from our work, and it sure feels great when it works out that way.
“With the small number of students we have, there are shifts from grade to grade and from year to year in our test results,” James said. “One thing that has remained constant, however, is that we have more students achieving at the highest levels and fewer at lowest levels. That is the most important fact about our test scores, but the fact that our students are so much more than their test scores is what we all find truly rewarding.”
Cook County ISD 166 Superintendent Beth Schwarz said she was “super thrilled” for Sawtooth to make the Celebration-eligible list and she said prior decisions by the school board to reduce class size in the K-2 grades and the inclusion of MAPS testing (which measures academic progress) and bringing in two Q Comp professionals to provide staff support and teacher development were “major contributors to this success.”
And, noted Schwarz, “Above all, the depth and the quality of our elementary teaching staff is why this happened.”
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