The New Ulm High School will be the site of continued academic changes. Results from the Minnesota Report Card show that area school districts are still struggling to recover from the COVID pandemic.

NEW ULM — Minnesota Report Cards show area school districts are still recovering from the pandemic.

The Report Cards, released every August, measure several points of data to assess school progress. This includes the percentage of students meeting standards in math, reading, and science, the percentage of students graduating, and the percentage of students continuously attending school.

As the new school year begins, area districts are looking to put their academic improvement plans into motion based off of this data. Local districts agree they are looking to address problems presented by the pandemic and bring their scores back up to pre-pandemic levels and higher.

New Ulm Public School’s numbers did not fall greatly after the pandemic, and students are starting to rebound. From 2022 to 2023, their percentage of students meeting the math standards increased from 51% to 54.5%. This increased number matches the pre-pandemic score. Reading also increased from 50.5% to 51.3%, lagging behind the pre-pandemic level of 57.9%. Science has seen their percentage of students meeting standards stay the same, at 48.1%. The pre-pandemic level was 59.5%.

The high school graduated 95.3% of their seniors and and 75.6% of students attended school consistently. Director of Learning Services Dr. Paul Henn said keeping kids in school helped reduce score decreases.

“A lot of it is getting back into undisrupted days of school,” he said. “We went through periods of disruption when the pandemic hit and we had those requirements to meet. We tried to keep kids here as much as possible and we think that reduced decline. We have had staff across the district put in the time to accelerate learning and we have been very innovative since the pandemic. On support for our kids, especially on academic and mental health, we have done a great service.”

Dr. Henn said, while the Minnesota Report Cards measure students as being proficient or not proficient, the New Ulm School District has used four levels of proficiency and has programs in place to help bring students through those levels.

Sleepy Eye has seen their standards numbers continue to decrease in the years following the pandemic. From 2022 to 2023 Math decreased from 38.1% to 36.9%, Reading increased from 38.1% to 39%, and Science decreased from 43.4% to 40.3%. These are all down from pre-pandemic levels of 51.3%, 57.8%, and 56.3% respectively. Sleepy Eye Superintendent John Cselovski described the school’s expectations and what they are doing to address their decreases.

“We had discussions at the July school board retreat and came up with a multi-tiered action plan focusing on staff and students and providing interventions,” he said. “[We are] working with kids who are not meeting standards. [We plan on] providing interventions and multi-tiered incentives to students who perform better like potential field trips and other things kids can benefit from. We are using the RISE intervention program for our seventh and eighth graders. It provides reading intervention for our kids. We tried it with our summer school and it went very well. We believe it will close the gaps in lack of performance.”

Cselovski said the school has also brought in outside help. Southwest West Central Cooperative will be providing data mining services to help Sleepy Eye find more focused solutions. Curriculum specialists from South Central Service Cooperative will be aiding the school system’s teachers, ensuring they are teaching the standards effectively and receiving support.

Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop (GFW) has seen their scores fall across the board. Students meeting standards fell from 34.3% to 32.4% in Math, 46.9% to 42.7% in Reading, and 34.4% to 25.9% in Science. Pre-pandemic levels for these scores were 52.4%, 61.4%, and 45.9% respectively. GFW was also the only area school district to have a percentage of consistently attending students lower than the state average. GFW Superintendent Jeff Horton said the district is working hard to come back from pandemic and financial problems.

“Like all districts we went through the pandemic but we also have had monetary issues,” he said. “Prior to me being here in the 2020-2021 we went into statutory operating debt. Because of that, we had massive cuts to student programming. We are seeing some of the effects of reduced programs for students who were in elementary school at the time and now are in middle school and middle schoolers who are in high school. We are implementing a two-way immersion program and adding a new K-12 English and Science curriculum. Next year we will be implementing a Social Studies and Math curriculum. We focus on growth and set our targets using our Fastbridge tests. Our students have shown growth with our tests regardless of what the state tests have said.”

Statewide Reading and Science scores have continued to fall, while Math scores are beginning to rebound. Reading scores were at 59.2% pre-pandemic, 51.1% in 2022, and 49.9% in 2023. Science scores were at 50.7% pre-pandemic, 41.3% in 2022, and 39.2% in 2023. Math scores were at 55% pre-pandemic, 44.8% in 2022, and 45.5% in 2023. The graduation rate was 83.6% and consistent attendance percentage was at 69.8%. Every school district in and around New Ulm had a graduation rate higher than the state average.