School District Numbers Contain Surprises

It was "numbers night" Monday at the St. Louis Park School Board meeting, with annual charts and graphs showing early enrollment, academic achievement, athletic participation and financial reports of all kinds.

Unofficial totals, awaiting dropped student numbers later this week, show the adding 82 students since June, the reduced by 11, and elementary grades totaling an additional 44 students.

At 379 students, the incoming high school freshman class was the largest at the school—a full 71 students larger than the smallest class, the juniors. The average elementary school class size throughout the district was 24 students. Other class sizes were not provided.

Early student achievement figures were presented by District Research and Assessment Director Prachee Mukherjee, who promised a complete public report by Oct. 15.

The local Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) test showed local students improving from the fall test of 2010 to the spring test of 2011, exceeding the national norm in math and reading by three points in 2010, then by 12 in 2011.

Last year’s fifth graders who took the test showed an exceptional spike to 36 points above the national median, while last year’s eighth graders who took the test dropped 10 points from the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2011.

In State Basic Standards test results, the district outperformed the state proficiency averages in reading by 2 to 5 percent over all grade levels. It exceeded state proficiency averages in math by 2 to 9 percent over all grade levels.

Numbers announced by St. Louis Park Junior High Principal Les Bork contained a surprise. Carrying over from last year’s exceptional fifth grade academic class achievement, this year’s sixth graders have 88 students in the school’s Gifted and Talented program—more than double the 33 seventh graders and quadruple the 23 eighth graders participating.

“We’re still working to better understand those numbers,” said Bork, “to see how they were identified.”