December news from the Superintendent
There is a significant difference between what a child might know and what a test score might reveal. Just as a blood pressure check doesn't provide a measure of the total health of an individual, an MCA II (standardized test) result showing a particular reading level is only one indicator of that student's educational well being. Still, a blood pressure result of 140/98 surely signals the need for further medical screening. In like fashion, the scores earned through Minnesota's testing program must force us to look more closely at both our students and our system.

Thankfully, we now have more "diagnostic" tools at our disposal and we are poised to do something with what we might find. We have implemented an instructional strategy called "Response To Intervention" (RTI). It is intended to provide teachers with both the kinds of instructional tools and the teaching techniques to identify and remedy individual learning challenges for all students before these rise to the level that would require traditional special education services for some of the kids.

In RTI, testing tools are used more frequently and the results are used not only to monitor student progress but to signal the need for different educational responses on behalf of all learners. Where MCA II results are one-time only snapshots of individual performance, RTI techniques involve regular diagnoses with more student centered tests which give powerful information to teachers.

At the same time that we have been moving into RTI, we are also taking a closer look at our state testing data in an effort to make program level decisions. Colleen Cardenuto, Teaching, Learning and Assessment Director, has spent a great deal of time this fall working with teachers and principals in assessing their school's data and then they have worked together to make informed instructional decisions for the classroom. Our teachers now have access to this test data and it has given them the opportunity to "crawl" inside the results in order to examine both student performance and curriculum alignment. Our staff is looking closely at how individuals are doing as well as at how closely our instructional system matches the state-required tests. For example, if the fifth grade state science test expects students to know a lot about photosynthesis but school districts have the major unit in sixth grade, it should come as no surprise that many children wouldn't do well on that section of the test.

Mid-Year Budget Reductions
At a recent meeting of the Board of Education, we implemented $130,405 of budget reductions for the current school year. These reductions were made to ensure that we reach our 1% fund balance goal by June 30, 2009. The board recently adopted a resolution to establish a fund balance policy to reach a target of 3% by the end of fiscal year 2011, and 5% by the end of fiscal year 2013.