Policy 623-R School District Accountability Regulations

A. “Academic standard” means a summary description of student learning in a required content area or elective content area.

B. “Benchmark” means specific knowledge or skill that a student must master to complete part of an academic standard by the end of the grade level or grade band.

C. “Curriculum” means district or school adopted programs and written plans for providing students with learning experiences that lead to expected knowledge, skills, and career and college readiness.

D. “Instruction” means methods of providing learning experiences that enable students to meet state and district academic standards and graduation requirements.

E. “Performance measures” are measures to determine school district and school site progress in striving to create the world’s best workforce and must include at least the following:

1. the size of the academic achievement gap and rigorous course taking, including college-level advanced placement, international baccalaureate, postsecondary enrollment options, including concurrent enrollment, other rigorous courses of study or industry certification courses or programs, and enrichment experiences by student subgroup;

2. student performance on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments;

3. high school graduation rates; and

4. career and college readiness under Minn. Stat. § 120B.30, Subd. 1.

F. “World’s best workforce” means striving to: meet school readiness goals; have all third-grade students achieve grade-level literacy; close the academic achievement gap among all racial and ethnic groups of students and between students living in poverty and students not living in poverty; have all students attain career and college readiness before graduating from high school; and have all students graduate from high school.

G. “Experiential learning” means learning for students that includes career exploration through a specific learning, volunteering, internships, other cooperative work experience, youth apprenticeship, or employment.

A. The school board, at a public meeting, shall adopt a comprehensive, long-term strategic plan to support and improve teaching and learning that is aligned with creating the world’s best workforce and includes the following:

1. clearly defined school district and school site goals and benchmarks for instruction and student achievement for all nine student categories identified under the federal law.

2. a process to assess and evaluate each student’s progress toward meeting state and local academic standards, assess and identify students for participation in gifted and talented programs and accelerate their instruction, adopt procedures for early admission to kindergarten or first grade of gifted and talented learners which are sensitive to under-represented groups, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of instruction in pursuit of student and school success and curriculum affecting students’ progress and growth toward career and college readiness and leading to the world’s best workforce;

3. a system to periodically review and evaluate the effectiveness of all instruction and curriculum, taking into account strategies and best practices and student outcomes.

4. strategies for improving instruction, curriculum, and student achievement, including the English and, where practicable, the native language development and the academic achievement of English learners;

5. a process to examine the equitable distribution of teachers and strategies to ensure low-income and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, ineffective, or out-of-field teachers;

6. education effectiveness practices that integrate high-quality instruction, rigorous curriculum, technology, and a collaborative professional culture that develops and supports teacher quality, performance, and effectiveness; and

7. an annual budget for continuing to implement the school district plan.

A. District Advisory Committee: The school board shall establish an advisory committee to ensure active community participation in all phases of planning and improving the instruction and curriculum affecting state and district academic standards, consistent with subdivision

B. Site Team: A school must establish a site team to develop and implement strategies and education effectiveness practices to improve instruction, curriculum, cultural competencies, including cultural awareness and cross-cultural communication, and student achievement at the school site, consistent with subdivision the site team must include equal number of teachers and administrators and at least one parent.

Consistent with requirements for school performance reports the School Board shall publish a report in the local newspaper with the largest circulation in the district, by mail, or by electronic means on the district web site. The School Board shall hold an annual public meeting to review, and revise where appropriate, student achievement goals, local assessment outcomes, plans, strategies, and practices for improving curriculum and instruction and cultural competency, and efforts to equitably distribute diverse, effective, experienced, and in-field teachers, and to review district success in realizing the previously adopted student achievement goals and related benchmarks and the improvement plans leading to the world's best workforce. The School Board must transmit an electronic summary of its report to the commissioner in the form and manner the commissioner
determines.

Each school district shall periodically survey affected constituencies, in their native languages where appropriate and practicable, about their connection to and level of satisfaction with school. The district shall include the results of this evaluation in the summary report.

• Adopted: July 1, 1990
• Amended: November 9, 1992
• Amended: August 16, 2004
• Amended: May 14, 2007
• Amended: August 11, 2014
• Amended: October 8, 2018
• Last Reviewed: October 8, 2018

• Policy 623 - School District Accountability