Category Measures

• 3rd Grade Reading Scores
• Kindergarten Readiness
• High School Graduation Rates
• School Attendance

Why This Is Important

Third grade is an important milestone in a child's academic life. After third grade, students should be past the point of learning to read and instead reading to learn. If students are not reading well by third grade, they will face an uphill battle throughout their remaining nine years of school.

What's Being Done

Literacy has been a hallmark of Minneapolis Public Schools for the past decade. Key initiatives to improve early literacy include:

• Placing specially trained literacy coaches in each school to work directly with teachers and principals on reading instruction.
• Increasing the amount of time teachers spend on reading and literacy activities.
• Standardizing and consistently using reading assessment tools to better understand students' literacy strengths and weaknesses.
• Adopting a holistic approach to literacy that includes reading, writing, listening and speaking, and incorporates both phonetics and whole language.
• Increasing teachers' on-the-job professional development.

About This Measure

Third grade reading results are from the Minnesota Department of Education's official Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment of Reading, which is administered in the spring of each year. This assessment measures vocabulary, literal comprehension, and inferential comprehension using multiple choice and open-ended questions. Proficiency standards are set by Minnesota Department of Education committees.