School District 622 Planning Program for 4-Year-Olds

Minnesota’s waiver from the provisions of No Child Left Behind is giving School District 622 more flexibility in how it uses its Title 1 money—federal money the district receives based on its percentage of low-income students.

The district is using that flexibility to start a program for 4-year-olds, said Superintendent Patty Phillips Tuesday. It’s a move she expects to save the district money in the long run, she said.

“There is a 17 to 1 return on investment for every dollar spent in preschool,” she said. “We're going to have fewer and fewer kids who need Title 1 dollars in second and third grade.”

Due to the waiver, the district is also implementing a new system to evaluate students called the Multiple Measurements Rating (MMR) system in the coming school year, said Assessment and Research Coordinator Paul Brashear, at the school board meeting March 27.

Brashear said that under No Child Left Behind, a school had to meet its Annual Yearly Progress goal for all of its 18 targets or face a series of consequence stages, which he called a “path of doom.” Schools in those stages could face major staffing changes and could even be shut down. 

In December of 2011, Minnesota received a waiver that exempted the state's schools from facing those consequence stages.

Though District 622 schools won't face federally mandated penalties, Brashear said, “we still have standards, we still have assessments. What we're expecting of our schools is more rigorous than Minnesota's yearly targets.”

The new system looks at four measurements: student proficiency, student growth, achievement gap reduction and graduation rate. Brashear said that MMR promotes growth for all students, provides incentives for high performance, and attacks the achievement gap directly.

Schools that score high on the MMR scale will receive publicity and praise, he said, and those that score low will have extensive reform and professional development support.