One of the highest aspirations of the public school system is to educate students from all backgrounds, colors, creeds, and income levels. Sometimes, it’s easy for students to have their past, present, and future defined by their struggles or marginalized identities. Yet the best educators and the best schools reject the implicit thesis that some students are no more than their circumstances.
Minnesota holds several bright spots — schools with a high percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch, whose poverty might lead some to predict a dismal educational outcome. (In fact, Minnesota is in an unfortunate minority of states that holds a very strong correlation between low test scores and high poverty levels.) However, educators in these bright spot schools have guided their students to happier outcomes.
This November, the Minnesota Star-Tribune identified 50 high-poverty public and charter schools as “beating the odds,” meaning that their students performed far better than expected on math and reading tests. That project found that most of the metro schools that were “beating the odds” were charter schools, while many of the schools highlighted in Greater Minnesota were public.
Today, I’m highlighting the top five Minnesota public school “bright spots” for third grade reading proficiency as found by Chad Aldeman and The 74’s recent research project. That project searched for high-poverty, higher than expected-testing public schools in each state.
These bright spot public schools show that quality policies, careful pedagogy, and high expectations can deliver promising results for the students in highest need in our state. Reading proficiency in third grade functions as an essential benchmark for schools, since students transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” in third grade.
There is still ample room for improvement, but it’s important to remember that committed reform efforts can ensure a quality future for our public school students in poverty.