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The StarTribune published the 2008 Minnesota School Test Scores on their site last week, but it wasn’t in a format I found particularly valuable. Rather than alphabetical by school, hot about being able to sort by performance?
So I put that together in a spreadsheet, which can be found below, or at this link. Note that there are 4 tabs. The first combines all metro schools (Public, Private, and Charter). The other three provide the stats by type of corporation (not sure that’s the right term for it).
The results are currently sorted by math proficiency percentage. Controls to scroll left/right can be found at the bottom of the chart.
A few observations:
1. Edina was the top public school.
2. However, Katherine Kersten’s favorite charter school to hate ranked higher: Tarek Ibn Ziyad, Inver Grove Heights.
3. Delano ranked 4th among publics, which came as a surprise to me since I associate Delano with KQ’s Terri Traen.
4. I’m surprised how many students in Stillwater are enrolled in charter or private schools considering how good the public school is. Of course, privates and charters do well too.
5. Privates beat publics, but publics beat charters. I imagine that the students who end up in private schools come from above average families motivation-wise. But what’s the deal with charters (on average) underperforming publics?
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Charters are by their nature an alternative choice. Most parents don’t consider the option until they have a reason to secondguess the “traditional” public school system. Even an “underperforming” charter school may be providing a better education to an individual child than they would get in a “traditional” school.
True that, charters probably are more likely to end up with kids whose parents blame the school district rather than themselves, for their childrens education failures.
Education is a two way street.
Wow, my school, Richfield, fared below Minneapolis. Way to go Spartans!
Why did the private schools that took the test take the test in the first place? That list obviously doesn’t contain a boat load of private schools. I’m just curious about the motivations of the schools that decided to take it.
Education may be a two way street but the schools need to be accountable too. No Child Left Behind efforts like this are ironic because they generally presume that if you make struggling schools transparent, market pressure will improve the quality of the education.
The presumption is that all kids have the same educational needs.
I would rather be looking at the incremental progress in reading, writing and math skills to see if the kids that go to a particular school get ahead, fall behind or create the impression that the school is good because it is filled with students that test well to begin with.
Wait, only 3 kids go to TIZ? Or am I not reading this right at all…
Brandi, the private schools probably want to look good. If they know they can, why not?
e, the 3 is the number who took the test. The TIZ campus that’s been in the news is the Inver Grove Heights campus which shows 69 test takers.