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Math scores suffer, reading improve in latest test results
by Tim Pugmire, Minnesota Public Radio
April 16, 2003

Reg Allen, the education agency's assessment director, says the preliminary findings show some schools are more effective than others. (MPR Photo/Tim Pugmire)

Reading scores on this year's 8th grade Basic Skills Tests improved slightly, while math scores slipped for the first time in four years. State education officials released test results on Wednesday for individual schools, school districts and the state as a whole. They say minority students continue to lag far behind.

St. Paul, Minn. — Nearly 65,000 Minnesota 8th graders took the Basic Skills Tests in February. State education officials say 81 percent passed the reading test. It's the highest mark since the tests became a requirement in 1998, but only a slight improvement over last year's 80 percent. The passing rate for the math test fell to just under 72percent. That's down from nearly 75 percent last year.

"We have teachers doing wonderful things with kids, " said Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke. "We have students increasing by leaps and bounds. It's one group of students. I think that clearly we can say as we look at these data, there are some students who are not achieving. There are some students who are not passing."

	Education commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke

Yecke is particularly troubled by the persistent achievement gap between students of color and their white classmates. For example, 78 percent of white students passed the math test, compared to just 33 percent of black students.

Forty-three percent of Hispanic and American Indian students passed. Those gaps have narrowed only slightly over six years. Yecke says Minnesota's test gaps are among the worst in the nation.

"When I saw the demographic breakdown of these scores, I was shocked. I had no idea that in a state that was pointed to as a leader in education only a few years ago that such a disparity can exist," she said.

The Basic Skills Tests are designed to measure minimum competency. The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, or MCAs are the much more rigorous state tests given in third and fifth grades.

Yecke's department has been analyzing scores from both tests, trying to measure students' academic growth between fifth and eighth grades. She highlighted 20 middle schools that showed significant growth on the BST math test and 20 schools that had similar gains on the reading tests.

Reg Allen, the education agency's assessment director, says the preliminary findings show some schools are more effective than others. "If you are a student with a low MCA score in grade five, and you join a group where most people have high MCA scores, you are more likely to have a higher BST score," he said. "And that raises some very interesting and profound questions." The high performers include middle schools in some of the state's wealthiest suburbs. Orono, Mounds View, Edina, Eden Prairie, and Wayzata top the state's list. Still, Commissioner Yecke says these schools are doing something special. She wants to learn the formula.

"We need to look at these schools as models, and get more information so that we can then share their strategies, their instructional strategies, their leadership style, with other schools, so that other schools can benefit from the lessons that these folks have learned and applied over time," Yecke said. The state's largest urban districts are not among the model performers. They continue to have large numbers of 8th graders failing the tests.

David Heistad, director of research, evaluation and assessment for Minneapolis public schools, says he's pleased the state is trying to measure student growth. But he says their formula should consider factors like poverty.

"If you adjusted the scores for poverty level you might find a more fair comparison of schools in the inner cities to suburban schools," Heistad said.

The passing rate for the reading test climbed more than two points in Minneapolis to just under 55 percent. Results on the math test were down one point at 46.5. In St. Paul, 56 percent passed the reading test, a one-point gain from last year. The math passing rate fell from 47.7 percent last year to 45 percent this year.

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