Normally district test scores only spell doom and gloom. But this year, there seems to be an anomaly showing up in the Edina Public Schools district.
Check out the chart below on Edina’s 10th grade reading proficiency for 2023, courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Education website. The number of students reaching proficiency rose from 72.7% in 2022, to 85.5% in 2023. Considering that academic proficiency seems to generally get worse and worse year after year, such improvement is nothing short of a miracle.
For those curious, here’s a closer look at Edina’s 10th grade reading scores year by year. As you can see, the number of test takers only went up about 50 students. And the pre- and post-pandemic proficiency percentages were roughly similar to each other. But now, suddenly, 2023 has a huge leap–a leap not seen in any other Edina grades either, as most of the students in the district’s other grades either plateau or decline in their reading proficiency.
So, is it time to send our 10th graders flocking to Edina Public Schools to partake in this miracle of achievement … or is it time to cast a suspicious eye on this apparent testing anomaly?
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Image Credit: Flickr-Ecole polytechnique, CC BY-SA 2.0
