(NAME-MCE) Testing to look at gap in students' learning

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Testing to look at gap in students' learning

By Dave Aeikens • daeikens at stcloudtimes.com • September 17, 2009

http://www.sctimes.com/article/20090917/NEWS01/109170031/1009/Testing-to-look-at-gap-in-students--learning

Kindergartners in three St. Cloud schools with growing minority populations
will take math and reading tests this year to help the school district get a
better handle on a success gap between white and minority students.

The tests at Discovery Community, Talahi Community and Madison Elementary
schools will be paid for with a $5,000 grant from Create CommUNITY, a group
working to improve racial harmony in St. Cloud.

“If we can follow them from kindergarten, it will show us a pattern of what
intervention needs to happen,” said Hedy Tripp, coordinator for Create
CommUNITY.

St. Cloud school district has about a 23 precent minority population. It has
struggled to get its minority students, many of them new to the United
States and English, to reach success levels similar to its white population.
In 2008-09, white students are passing the Minnesota Comprehensive
Assessment reading tests at a rate 41 percentage points higher than black
students and by 39 percentage points higher in math.

“We’ve got to get the black students to catch up, absolutely, that is our
goal,” said Julia Espe, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment
for St. Cloud school district.

St. Cloud is already testing students in grades two through nine three times
a year using tests called Measures of Academic Progress.

Many school districts including Sartell-St. Stephen and Sauk Rapids-Rice use
the MAP. St. Cloud used federal stimulus dollars to pay for the tests for
those grades.

Some older students already have taken the first round of computerized
tests. Staff use the results to follow student progress in reading and math
and adjust and change curriculum and individual instruction to better meet
the needs of the students.

Kindergarten classes will take the tests later at Madison and will get some
instruction on taking what might be their first test in school, Madison
Principal Paula Henry said.

“We want to do the very, very best we can for every child. That test will
help us see where each student is. It gives us excellent data,” Henry said.

The grant will allow St. Cloud school district to start evaluating students
in three of its eight elementary schools two years sooner and begin
developing a base of information.“I’m looking forward to having access to
this data. It will help us not only in long-range planning, it will help us
look where students are so we can help them earlier,” Espe said.