While the Adequate Yearly Progress results released this week show almost half of Minnesota schools didn’t meet goals, local educators say such results only show part of the story.

“There’s some frustration within education circles,” Albert Lea Superintendent Michael Funk said. “We have quality schools in Minnesota and we get painted with this brush of all these schools not making progress because of what’s happening within these individual subgroups within the system.”

According to educators like Alden-Conger Superintendent Joe Guanella, the AYP shows a narrow picture of the schools.

“I think it’s a basic snapshot, where it’s certainly not the large picture,” Guanella said.

“I would hate for anybody to be thinking less of their schools because they show up on this list,” Guanella added.

The program does, however, show that there are areas where students do need to improve.

“Do we have students who need more help? Absolutely, across the United States. Do we have students who are succeeding superbly? Absolutely, across the United States. It just seems like a very broad brush, rather than a very fine brush that we’re using when we make these big labels,” said Albert Lea Director of Curriculum Judy Knudtson.

The program is positive in that it gives schools a focused target for improvements, but Jensen said this can hurt the schools’ image in many communities, said United South Central Superintendent Jerry Jensen.

“If you lose sight of that, and just take it in the big broad brush and say, ’well, this school didn’t make AYP’ without looking at maybe it was just a very small sliver of the students in the building. It just seems to be doing a lot of negative public relations damage in the communities that really isn’t necessary,” Jensen said.

Raising the bar

To many people, it looks like the schools just failed to meet the standards this past school year without realizing the proficiency standards raise each year, Jensen said.

“This moving target that we have — it’s inevitable that more and more schools are going to end up on this list,” Jensen said. “The public has to just understand that it’s just a fact they have to acknowledge, that when you continue to raise the bar, you’ll just have a higher incidence of schools that don’t make it.”

Glenville-Emmons Superintendent Mark Roubinek said he’s afraid many schools will be able to improve to a certain level, and then more and more schools will not meet their goals.

“You can make big gains when you’re young and you’re just learning things. But once you’ve refined it, you’ve put in a lot of practice time, your gains tend to be smaller,” Roubinek said.

Guanella said people need to be careful when looking at the data and seeing what that says about local schools.

“I think Albert Lea does a great job, I think Glenville-Emmons does and I think USC does. I don’t think they’re failing their kids,” Guanella said. “I think we’re all in the same boat. We’re trying our darndest to make this work.”

Other testing

Like the other area school boards, the Albert Lea school board sets districtwide goals each year, as well as determines goals for teachers, schools and students. The district then maps students’ progress to help all students achieve goals, Knudtson said.

“Just because they may not have met the standard for passing this year, doesn’t mean that over last year they didn’t make a lot of improvement,” Knudtson said.

The AYP is only one of many benchmarks used in the schools, but it’s the most public benchmark, Funk said.

Funk said there isn’t a national standardized test, so results differ from results released in other parts of the country.

Guanella said the growth a student makes is often more important than where that student stands in accordance to his or her grade levels. The North West Evaluation Association tests show growth by testing students three times a year to see the progress each student makes.

“It all depends on the result that you want. For the results that they would like to be able to see and track, it makes perfect sense. For the result that we would like to be able to see and use, it’s not effective,” Guanella said.

The AYP results are released in August, and Guanella said that makes it difficult to make changes before the school year starts.

The test isn’t a comprehensive outlook, and Roubinek said this doesn’t test other life skills.

“It really scares me to think that just because you have a certain score means you’re confident, capable and are going to be successful. There’s more to it than that,” Roubinek said.