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On the surface, the news looks bad.

When the Minnesota Department of Education released its report card on how students throughout the state — including Steele County students — performed on standardized tests under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the news looked discouraging. The grades? Owatonna failed. Blooming Prairie failed. Medford failed. Or at least that’s what the report says.

The problem with the report is that it is terribly, terribly misleading. And the report really points to a problem with the way in which schools are deemed “failing” under the federal guidelines.

Take, for example, the Owatonna school district. The test results show that Owatonna students scored higher on standardized tests during the last academic year than they had in previous years. Yet, the school district itself was deemed failing. Indeed, the overall test results, according to the state, show that the district did quite well in both math and reading at most schools. Furthermore, the state deemed the district’s graduation rate to be fine.

So why, then, did the district receive failing marks?

The failing marks came because of the way in which students are categorized. Each student is placed in subgroups — sometimes a variety of subgroups — for the test. Those subgroups could be based on race, ethnic origin, limited English proficiency, special education status and even if the student receives a free lunch. If even one subgroup fails, the entire school fails and the district fails. The purpose of the categorization, experts say, is to “shed light on the achievement gap” between groups.

Although that may be a worthwhile goal, it unfairly penalizes school districts. In Owatonna, for example, only four subgroups had problems passing the tests — Hispanic students, students with limited English proficiency, special education and students on free or reduced lunches. In some cases, students may be in more than one of those subgroups. Imagine a poor immigrant child with limited English skills trying to take a test in a language that is not his native tongue — something that would be difficult for any of us to do. That child could be in three subgroups, and his failure on the test would be counted as three failing marks.

Of course, no school district is perfect and there’s always room for improvement. Still, the test results don’t show the entire picture, and our communities should not be discouraged by the results.

Owatonna People’s Press editorials are the opinion of the Press editorial board. Other editorials, columns, letters and cartoons appearing on this page are the opinions of the authors and artists and not necessarily the People’s Press.
 
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