Results mixed in Star Schools Project

Five new charter schools see higher graduation and postsecondary education rates, but their state test results have been a bit uneven.

By GREGORY A. PATTERSON, Star Tribune

Last update: September 11, 2009 - 7:19 PM

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An experiment to start five local charter high schools in recent years has resulted in higher graduation rates and more students moving on to postsecondary education, but achievement on state tests has been uneven, according to a report released today.

The Star Schools Project, led by the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, graduated 96 percent of its students in 2008, compared with 91.6 percent statewide for public schools. Of those graduates, 86 percent enrolled in some form of postsecondary education this year.

Yet two of the schools -- Augsburg Fairview Academy and Minnesota North Star Academy -- failed to meet the "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) requirements of the No Child Left Behind Law.

At Augsburg Fairview, for example, only 6 percent of the students taking the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment II test achieved a "proficient" or better score in math. But another school in the project, Twin Cities Academy, performed better than state averages in reading, math and science.

"We readily acknowledge that test scores in three of the schools are encouraging and two of them really need some improvement," said Joe Nathan, who led the project and is director of the Center for School Change.

The other two schools in the project are the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Arts and Great River School. Augsburg Fairview is in Minneapolis; the others are in St. Paul.

The project was funded by a $3 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, beginning in 2002.

The broad outlines of the project called for Nathan's team to create a small group of high-quality high schools that would cooperate with one another to do a better job of educating students, according to the report.

Graduation and college enrollment numbers were impressive, but the level of cooperation among the schools failed to meet the project's goals. The schools plan to continue looking for areas of cooperation.

The schools did share a summer school program and teacher training, and they held monthly meetings, but they could have gone further by sharing business and human resources, the report said.

"I'm encouraged by the percentage of kids who graduated, and I'm encouraged by the percentage of kids going onto some form of higher education," Nathan said. "But the schools continue to need to work on some things."

Gregory A. Patterson • 612-673-7287

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