By Tanner Kent
MANKATO — Data is like money: It won’t show returns unless it’s invested.
The Mankato Area School District — like many around the country — approaches student achievement like a business conducted in the currency of test results.
The district has 25 standardized evaluations on its testing schedule. Teachers spend weeks reviewing state standards and poring over hundreds of student data records. Mankato employs a full-time assessment coordinator just to evaluate test procedures, results and proficiency benchmarks.
All in the name of generating data that can be reinvested in students.
“We look at all kinds of data,” said Gwen Walz, Mankato’s assessment expert. “The learning curve for all of us has been learning how to use all that data.”
Not that long ago, Mankato East Junior High’s data-investment portfolio was looking empty.
In 2006, the school missed AYP — adequate yearly progress, or the assessment arm of the federal No Child Left Behind Act — for the second year in a row. For that, the school was forced to set aside $10,000 for staff and curriculum improvements as well as some of its Title I funds to transport students to other schools that were making AYP.
And since East Junior High receives Title I funds, which are available to buildings with a high percentage of free and reduced lunch students, a third year on the needs improvement list would have meant even stiffer financial penalties.
“Overall, our scores were still pretty strong at that time,” said East Jr. High principal Rich Dahman. “But the purpose is not to look at overall scores, but to truly make sure no child is left behind.”
To accomplish that goal, Dahman focused on ways to invest his data.
And it didn’t take long for his investments to begin showing returns.
Test results at East Jr. High showed that students were struggling with vocabulary and reading comprehension. So, teachers started using word walls to emphasize key terms and started teaching students context clues to derive word meanings. They also resuscitated an old reading program where all students read a novel of their choice for 10 minutes at the beginning of English class and in homeroom.
“But the goal is not to just pass the tests,” said eighth-grade English teacher Caia Fredrickson. “We want to create lifelong readers and lifelong learners.”
Test results in both reading and math illustrated a need for more individualized instruction. So, Dahman and his staff reduced class sizes and hired more paraprofessionals to decrease the teacher-to-student ratio. They established intervention classes and developed a team approach to working with struggling students before they fall behind.
“We used all of our test data to identify areas of need,” Dahman said. “When a school is on the Needs Improvement list, it does raise a certain level of concern. I think we’ve taken a lot of pride in bringing our scores back up.”
Today, East Jr. High is off the Needs Improvement list and is on the profit side of student achievement.
According to test results, 12 percent of East Jr. High students scored above the 90th percentile in reading nationwide; 20 percent exceeded that mark in math.
But Dahman is not satisfied with grade-level proficiency. He wants all of his eighth-graders to be proficient in reading and math at a ninth-grade level — and he’s almost succeeded.
“We’ve achieved that in math and we’re almost there with reading,” Dahman said. “We don’t want to forget the top-end students. We have a lot of kids making real progress.”
