MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Inequality and complacency: Experts weigh in on Minnesota’s lagging student achievement

Christopher Ingraham / Minnesota Reformer — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 12:51:00 GMT

Student achievement in Minnesota has been lagging for much of the past decade. While students in all states have struggled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions of classroom instruction, test scores in Minnesota have fallen more sharply here than in the rest of the country.

“There are many factors that contribute to student academic achievement, and test scores are one important measure to help us understand how our students are doing,” said Anna Arkin of the Department of Education, in a statement. “The Walz-Flanagan administration has made historic investments in education to improve academic outcomes — including signing the largest education budget in state history and ensuring every student receives breakfast and lunch at school."

As a former public school geography teacher, Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has long said education is one of his top priorities.

Walz has earned the enthusiastic endorsements of teachers unions through vigorous support of policy goals like school funding increases, along with opposition to conservative-driven privatization efforts.

He has committed to a goal of making Minnesota the “best state in the country for kids,” in part by making Minnesota schools “the very best in the nation.” With the help of Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers, Walz has in recent years signed major pieces of education legislation in furtherance of those goals, including universal free school lunches, billions in additional school spending, early education support, and curriculum changes.

The DFL’s 2023 education law boosted school funding and indexed the funding formula to inflation. It also increased special education subsidies, put $300 million toward early childhood education programs, and provided permanent funding for thousands of pre-K slots.

Despite these efforts, Minnesota students are being surpassed by their peers more and more often.

Minnesota recently ranked 19th among the states in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s long-running education quality rankings, a drop from sixth place less than a decade ago. National benchmarks showed that in 2022, Minnesota fourth graders’ reading proficiency fell below the national average for the first time in history.

Elementary school students in Mississippi, a state that has long been the butt of jokes about its poor quality of life, now perform slightly better on national reading tests than their peers in Minnesota.

Experts say a number of factors have driven the decline.

Persistent economic and racial disparities

Minnesota has some of the highest rates of racial inequality in the U.S., and the inequality begins well before students step foot in a classroom. Racial gaps in health, income and homeownership are among the worst in the nation.

The disparities are also reflected in school.

White Minnesotans are 15 percentage points more likely to graduate than Black ones, the sixth-highest disparity in the nation, according to federal data.

Racial gaps on standardized test scores are similarly large and have been increasing, according to a 2019 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. These racial gaps are especially concerning as the public school system has become more diverse: The share of white students in Minnesota schools fell from 70% in the 2014-2015 school year to 62% in 2022-2023.

The gaps are not merely racial, however, according to the Fed report: “Low-income white students significantly trail higher-income white students across Minnesota.”

Some teachers’ advocates say funding issues are to blame for the state’s educational inequalities.

“Chronic underfunding of our schools has created a racialized system of haves and have-nots,” according to a report commissioned by Education Minnesota, the state teachers union. “And underfunding has left teachers under-resourced and driven many out of our classrooms because these professionals simply do not have the tools to do their job effectively.”

However, a 2019 report by the Education Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for equitable education, gave Minnesota high grades for ensuring education dollars flow to the districts and students that need them most.

Another factor likely driving those gaps: rising levels of school segregation, especially in the Twin Cities. The state’s liberal open enrollment system, which allows parents to choose where they send their kids regardless of home address, appears to be increasing the racial homogeneity of schools.

Charter schools, many of which focus on serving specific immigrant and minority communities, are also driving up school segregation in ways that may be reinforcing racial achievement gaps.

The net result: growing divides along the familiar fault lines of race and income, bringing aggregate achievement levels down with them.

COVID’s long shadow

While the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to learning losses across the nation, some education experts believe Minnesota was especially hard-hit. ��s remained closed or in remote instruction here longer than the national average during the pandemic, according to at least one estimate.

In 2022 Walz claimed “over 80% of our students missed less than 10 days of in-class learning.” His staff was later forced to clarify that he was referring to the 2021-2022 school year, by which time the worst of the pandemic had passed.

The extended closures had an effect beyond just test scores. Student absenteeism rates exploded, with poor and majority non-white schools especially affected.

More than half of Minneapolis students missed 10% or more of school days in 2022, according to state data. Among Black students the chronic absenteeism rate was closer to 70%.

Districts with high numbers of Indigenous students have also fared poorly. At the public high school on the Red Lake reservation the chronic absenteeism rate was greater than 95%.

“We just did not have an aggressive COVID recovery plan,” said Joshua Crosson, executive director of Minnesota education nonprofit EdAllies. “We’ve been reacting to these problems rather than attacking them head on. Other states have been more aggressive.”

Walz signed a bill this year that includes a pilot program to improve attendance; a legislative study group on the issue; and a $625,000 grant to a nonprofit to work on it.

“Where all the children are above average”

Crosson points to another, more nebulous factor lurking behind all of this: a complacent sense of exceptionalism.

“Minnesota really lacks a sense of urgency around improving its educational outcomes,” he said. Until recently, “the general ethos was we’re great already or we’re good enough.”

Other states, meanwhile, have been aggressively working to improve their educational outcomes. One area where this is apparent is in reading instruction. For many years schools across the country, including Minnesota, were teaching reading based on a faulty understanding of how kids learn.

“It was actually in statute that the wrong way to teach reading was the default,” Crosson said.

Beginning in 2013 states began moving away from the flawed teaching methods and back toward a more traditional, phonics-based instruction supported by evidence.

Minnesota has been on the slower side of that shift, according to EdWeek reporting. The state didn’t fully adopt scientific reading standards until 2023, with the passage of the READ Act.

Incidentally, the first state to adopt science-based reading standards was Mississippi, whose fourth-grade reading scores recently surpassed our own.

Crosson said he expects the READ Act to yield tangible results. While it’s still early, “We’re already starting to see our earliest learners improving their literacy rates.”

This story was originally published on MinnesotaReformer.com.

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Minnesota math, reading scores still far below pre-pandemic levels, statewide assessment shows

Alex Derosier / St. Paul Pioneer Press — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 17:43:50 GMT

ST. PAUL — Minnesota students’ reading and math scores on state proficiency tests have leveled off a bit, but they still haven’t recovered from a big dip during the pandemic, according to data released Thursday, Aug. 29 by the state education department.

As was the case last year, fewer than half of public school students met grade standards in reading, math and science, according to Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment results for 2024.

This year’s MCA results show that 45.5% of Minnesota students reached grade-level standards in math, the same as the year before. Reading scores also remained stable in 2024, with 49.9% of students testing as proficient.

Science, the lowest-scoring category at 39.6%, was up 0.4 percentage points from 2023. Last year it had dropped 2.1 percentage points. Like the other scores, it’s significantly down from before the pandemic. In 2019, about 50.7% were proficient in state science standards.

Asked about a long-term slide in scores that started before the pandemic and worsened during, Education Commissioner Willie Jett, who took his position in 2023, said test scores are just “one important way” the state measures school success.

“There are just so many different ways to measure academic achievement,” he said during a Thursday call with reporters from across the state, noting education officials also look at other metrics such as consistent attendance, graduation rates, and academic progress.

Scores remain down since pandemic

Statewide, scores are down significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, which education officials say presented a challenge for students and teachers as schools closed and students shifted to remote or hybrid learning. Reading and math are both down 8.4 percentage points from 2019.

Scores had already been sliding before the pandemic. On the 2014 MCA, 63% of students in grades three through eight were proficient in math and 59% were proficient in reading.

While scores have remained at or near lows reached during the pandemic, education officials said they were encouraged by the decline leveling out, as well as rising consistent attendance rates.

In the 2022-2023 school year, statewide consistent attendance grew to 74.5% from 69.8% the year before. But the rate remains significantly below where it sat before the pandemic.

Consistent attendance means students attending at least 90% of the time. Before the pandemic in 2019, around 85.4% of students were consistently attending school statewide.

State education officials say they think a major state funding increase from the 2023 legislative session, when the Democratic-Farmer-Labor-controlled state government boosted education funding by more than $2 billion and tied the formula to inflation, as well as other measures like new reading instruction standards and teacher recruitment, will turn around flagging schools.

“We’re working hard to put these new measures into place, and I think it’s going to be the long-term measures, many of which involve the large scale and systemic changes, that’s going to positively impact students for years to come,” Jett said. ”��s all across the country have faced some unprecedented challenges the last few years, and I just believe we’ve made some progress.”

Achievement gap

Minnesota still has an achievement gap between students of different ethnicities.

In past years, white students were about twice as likely to be proficient in math and reading than Black, Hispanic and American Indian students. Results this year only changed slightly, according to the state education department.

Minnesota reports the performance of 400,000 or so students around the state in August each year. Testing happens in the spring.

The state measures student proficiency in reading, math and science based on numbers from standardized tests including the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment and Minnesota Test of Academic Skills.

Students take the reading and math tests in third through eighth grades and once in high school so state education officials can gauge the success of schools. Science testing happens in fifth and eighth grades and once in high school.

They’re also used as part of a federal education accountability system that’s required under the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

The test isn’t mandatory to advance in school. This year nearly 93% of students took the math test and nearly 95% took the reading tests. And in 2020 the state did not have the MCA as the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools. Before the pandemic participation rates were higher — in 2018 and 2019 around 98% of students took tests.

Other measures of school performance include academic progress, attendance and graduation rates in what’s called the “North Star Accountability System.” The state of Minnesota gives additional aid to schools that do poorly on those metrics.

Reaction to scores

Statewide teachers union Education Minnesota said new investments in education from the state will take time to be reflected in test scores, and that school districts are struggling with a shortage of qualified staff.

“Too many schools still lack sufficient mental health teams, class sizes are too large and too many students are missing too much school,” said union president Denise Specht. “The Legislature and Gov. Tim Walz have made historic investments in public education, and that will help. We’re on the right track, but not there yet.”

Republicans say there isn’t enough flexibility in how schools can use funding and used Thursday’s test scores to take aim at DFL policies.

“These test results are a warning to every parent that our kids are not getting what they need in the classroom,” said Sen. Julia Coleman, a Waconia Republican who is her party’s lead on the Senate Education Policy Committee. “Despite record increases in funding and better attendance, testing scores are stuck.”

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Minnesota government watchdog finds Department of Education failed to provide oversight in food program

Mark Wasson — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 22:05:43 GMT

ST. PAUL — A new report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor concluded that the Minnesota Department of Education failed to properly oversee a food program that led to rampant fraud and dozens of people charged in federal court.

The OLA's report focused on MDE's lack of oversight over the Twin Cities nonprofit Feeding our Future, saying that the department knew of red flags years before federal charges were brought against 70 people involved in an alleged $250 million fraud.

"We found MDE’s oversight of Feeding Our Future to be inadequate," Legislative Auditor Judy Randall and Special Reviews Director Katherine Theisen wrote in their report. "In fact, we believe MDE’s actions and inactions created opportunities for fraud."

Earlier this month, a Minneapolis jury convicted five of seven defendants in the first trial regarding a federal investigation into the nonprofit and the FBI is investigating a possible plan to bribe a juror in that case.

Among the OLA's findings:

MDE failed to act on warning signs known to the department prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. MDE did not effectively exercise its authority to hold Feeding Our Future accountable to program requirements. MDE was ill-prepared to respond to the issues it encountered with Feeding Our Future.

During a Thursday hearing before the Legislative Audit Commission, MDE Commissioner Willie Jett declined to place blame for the lack of oversight when questioned by Rep Duane Quam, R-Byron.

"The level of fraud here was unprecedented," MDE Commissioner Willie Jett told the commission Thursday, adding that the department made effective referrals to law enforcement and has taken steps to ensure this type of fraud does not happen again.

MDE stopped approving applications for Feeding Our Future in 2020 after noticing red flags with the nonprofit's reporting procedures but resumed payments following a lawsuit by Feeding Our Future that alleged racial discrimination.

"Part of running an organization is actually making sure that you have competent people doing it and one way to drive that is to actually discipline people," Quam said.

Thursday's report comes on the heels of another damning report by the Legislative Auditor, which found about $205 million in unverified payments to people through a Frontline Worker Pay bonuses program in 2023.

Republicans have attacked the state's DFL leadership this week for failing to stop millions of allegedly fraudulent dollars from being spent through these programs.

“In 2022, Senate Republicans held three hearings to get to the bottom of the Feeding our Future scheme that was rocking headlines and eroding the trust of Minnesotans,” Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, said in a written statement. “Today, the OLA report demonstrates we are completely vindicated with our concerns and assessment that MDE failed to do even the most basic of accountability measures to protect taxpayers’ dollars and ensure food meant to feed children reached the children who needed it.”

The OLA's office made the following recommendations in its report:

The Legislature should either establish criteria in statute or give MDE the authority to conduct rulemaking to establish application criteria MDE should:
Take additional steps to verify information sponsors provide Place a greater emphasis on program integrity and risk-based monitoring if oversight requirements are waived again in the future Revise its complaint investigation procedures Prioritize independent fact-finding Limit information it shares with the subject of a complaint Evaluate recent statutory changes related to its investigative authority

However, Republicans have gone further by placing blame on Gov. Tim Walz's administration.

“Nothing changes, if nothing changes,” Johnson said. “Either Gov. Walz starts to hold his politically appointed commissioners and their staff accountable, or the waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayers’ dollars will continue. In the meantime, government spending will go up, services will be wasted, and Minnesotans will be left wondering just whether or not the high taxes they pay are being put to their best use.”

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Audit: Minnesota failed to investigate fraud complaints in child nutrition program

Deena Winter / Minnesota Reformer — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 21:18:27 GMT

The state’s legislative auditor found that the Minnesota Department of Education failed miserably in its duty to properly oversee millions of federal dollars it administered to nonprofits to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a special review by the Office of the Legislative Auditor released Thursday, June 13.

The audit examined how MDE administered a child nutrition program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and found the agency’s inadequate oversight “created opportunities for fraud.”

Federal prosecutors have charged scores of Minnesotans with ripping off the federal program by at least $250 million in the nation’s largest pandemic fraud scheme. Federal prosecutors say they gave away very little food, but got paid millions of dollars, which they used to buy Porsches and Teslas, vacations in the Maldives and homes from Prior Lake to Kenya.

Prosecutors have charged 70 people so far with being part of the Feeding Our Future case, named after one of two nonprofits at the center of the scheme. Eighteen people have pleaded guilty, one fled the country, and five were convicted of bribery, money laundering and wire fraud charges last week. Two were acquitted.

The nonprofits Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition were supposed to oversee other vendors and nonprofits purporting to be giving away ready-to-eat meals at sites all over the state, but instead, prosecutors said they enabled and participated in the fraud, keeping a portion of the federal money doled out. Founded less than five years earlier, they grew from collecting a few million dollars a year before the pandemic to dispersing about $200 million each in 2021.

Auditors found MDE failed to act on warning signs even prior to the pandemic; didn’t exercise its authority to make Feeding Our Future follow program requirements; and was ill-prepared to respond to the issues it encountered with Feeding Our Future.

As far back as 2018, MDE was getting complaints about Feeding Our Future and its food distribution sites, receiving at least 30 complaints from mid-2018 through 2021. And although the agency is required by law to promptly investigate complaints or irregularities, it didn’t investigate some complaints about Feeding Our Future at all. When MDE did follow up on complaints, its investigations were inadequate, to the point where “MDE inappropriately asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself,” the report said.

MDE’s procedures emphasized having the complainants and subjects resolve complaints on their own, the report said. The first step of their process was to share the complaint with the subject, so they could investigate their own conduct and try to resolve it without MDE intervention. When that didn’t work, MDE would make a formal report of the complaint, but again they gave the subject an opportunity to respond. This created a system ripe with potential for retaliation.

The legislative auditor found MDE failed in numerous ways to prevent the fraud, including:

By failing to use its authority to deny applications for the program years before the pandemic. By failing to verify statements made by the nonprofit Feeding Our Future before approving applications, especially “high-risk applicants.” By failing to follow-up on its 2018 review of Feeding Our Future’s child nutrition operations which raised concerns By only conducting limited off-site monitoring of food distribution sites.

MDE did stop payments to the nonprofit in 2021, but Feeding Our Future sued the state, alleging racial discrimination. Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann ruled that the state couldn’t halt payments unless they found fraud, so MDE resumed payments.

In a written response to the report, Education Commissioner Willie L. Jett II said MDE’s oversight “met applicable standards” and the agency “made effective referrals to law enforcement.”

“What happened with Feeding Our Future was a travesty – a coordinated, brazen abuse of nutrition programs that exist to ensure access to healthy meals for low-income children,” he wrote. “The responsibility for this flagrant fraud lies with the indicted and convicted fraudsters.”

Jett said the department has made changes to strengthen its oversight, establishing an Office of Inspector General, adding a general counsel’s office, training staff on updated fraud-reporting policy, and contracting with a firm to conduct financial reviews of certain sponsors.

During the recent trial of seven defendants charged with defrauding the program, the director of Minnesota’s nutrition program acknowledged she got some pushback from her own supervisors when she raised concerns about suspiciously high reimbursement claims.

Emily Honer, director of nutrition program services for the MDE, testified that she quickly became suspicious of huge reimbursement requests and alerted her superiors, the USDA, and eventually, the FBI.

Honer testified that she was not aware of any MDE employees who went to the locations where people claimed to be serving unfathomable amounts of meals daily. She said her employees didn’t go to the sites because that was the responsibility of the nonprofit groups overseeing the vendors. And prosecutors said those nonprofits — Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition — enabled and participated in the fraud.

Honer said due to Feeding Our Future’s “very nasty lawsuit,” MDE employees were often hauled into court and had to follow MDE protocol of working through concerns with the nonprofit sponsors overseeing the sites.

Outside of a month where MDE payments were stopped to some sponsors, MDE kept paying reimbursement claims until the FBI investigation went public in January 2022.

Republicans have blamed the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Gov. Tim Walz for failing to prevent the fraud. Walz has said the state’s hands were tied by a court order to resume payments, although Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann disputed that in a rare rebuke.

Honer testified that MDE opted to waive in-person monitoring of sites, but could still do “desk audits.” But Honer said she didn’t do any desk audits and didn’t ask any of her subordinates to do them — despite concerns that prompted her to go first to the USDA Office of Inspector General, and then the FBI, in April 2021.

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Bemidji Area ��s sees increase in graduation rates despite statewide drop

Daltyn Lofstrom — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 15:37:54 GMT

BEMIDJI — The Minnesota Department of Education released statewide graduation rates for the 2023 graduating class on March 28, detailing a slight decrease across the state compared to 2022.

Overall, a total of 58,293 students graduated within four years, coming in at 83.3% of students. This is down from 83.6% in 2022.

According to the MDE, the decrease is partially driven by an increase in the “unknown” reporting category, which tracks students who were either incorrectly reported or not reported as enrolled in another district.

Graduation rates held steady for American Indian students across the state at 61.3% while the rate for white students increased from 88.4% to 88.7%.

Beltrami County

While schools throughout Beltrami County were a mixed bag, the county itself saw a 4.1% increase from 2022. There were 443 out of 673 students who graduated in four years, which increased its graduation rate from 61.7% in 2022 to 65.8% in 2023.

Beltrami County’s drop-out rate fell from 11.4% in 2022 to 10.7% in 2023.

Students eligible for free or reduced lunch, often used as an indicator for low-income students, increased their graduation rate from 45.7% in 2022 to 51.2% in 2023. This nearly matches a 51.1% rate in 2021.

American Indian students saw a similar increase from 36.2% in 2022 to 38.8% in 2023 — exceeding their 38.2% rate in 2021.

Female graduates ranked above their male counterparts at 67.5% and 64.2% respectively for 2023. Both groups graduated more students since 2022 with females at 64.5% and males at 59.2%.

Bemidji schools

Bemidji Area ��s saw a 7.3% increase from 70.3% in 2022 to 77.6% in 2023. A total of 315 students out of 406 graduated within four years while 38 dropped out and 28 continued to earn their diplomas beyond a four-year timeline.

The district’s homeless demographic included 12 graduates out of 24 students, which leaves a 50% graduation rate up from 27.6% in 2022. Students receiving free and reduced lunches graduated at 61.2%, another increase from 53.1% the prior year.

American Indian students graduated from the district at a 52% rate for 2023, a 9.1% hike from 42.9% in 2022. Female students also outperformed males at the district level, 79.4% to 75.6% respectively.

For charter schools, TrekNorth Junior and Senior High �� trended downward from 87.1% in 2022 to 83.9% in 2023, or a difference of 3.2%. American Indian graduation also went down from 86.7% in 2022 to 78.6% last year. Male students graduated at an 83.3% rate compared to 84.6% for female students.

Voyageurs Expeditionary �� did not show four-year graduation rates for 2023 but noted a five-year rate of 43.8%.

Other area schools

Cass Lake-Bena Public ��s saw a considerable decline in four-year graduations by 32.5%. About 50.6% of students graduated compared to 83.1% in 2022. Their rate in 2022 marked an increase from 61.5% in 2021.

Red Lake High �� showed a 29.9% graduation rate, a 4.6% decrease from 2022’s rate of 34.5%.

Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig �� graduated 57.1% of its seniors, which is down from 65% in 2022.

A complete list of graduation rates for schools, districts and counties across the state can be found on the Minnesota Department of Education’s website.

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Bemidji area high school graduation rates generally drop amidst statewide increase

Daltyn Lofstrom — Sat, 08 Jul 2023 12:00:00 GMT

BEMIDJI — Four-year graduation rates for the class of 2022 have nearly matched pre-pandemic levels in Minnesota.

As the second class whose entire senior year was defined by the confines of the coronavirus pandemic, the gradual return to normalcy paved the way for 58,586 students, or 83.6%, to claim their high school diplomas in ceremonies that were a bit more traditional than for the class of 2021.

Having released statewide graduation rates for the 2021-2022 school year on April 25, the Minnesota Department of Education noted a 0.2% increase from 2021 to 2022’s graduating classes.

Minnesota’s overall four-year graduation rate in 2019 was 83.7%, which increased to a historic high of 83.8% in 2020 before falling to 83.3% in 2021.

According to the MDE, the four-year graduation rate for American Indian students increased by 2.5% while increasing 3.1% for Black students and 2.9% for students identifying as two or more races.

Beltrami County

On the home front, schools throughout Beltrami County had their own share of falls and peaks.

Beltrami County experienced an overall decrease in graduations from 65.9% in 2021 to 61.7% in 2022, a difference of 4.2%. A total of 384 out of 622 seniors graduated high school in four years.

Students eligible for free or reduced lunches graduated at a 45.7% rate, down from 51% in 2021.

Rates for American Indian students also fell across the county by 2% to 36.2% in 2022 compared to 38.2% in 2021.

Female students saw a higher graduation rate compared to their male counterparts, 64.5% and 59.2% respectively. However, 2022 marked an increase for male graduates from 58% in 2021 while females saw a sharp decline from 74.7% that same year.

Bemidji schools

Bemidji Area ��s saw a 7% decline from 77.3% in 2021 to 70.3% in 2022. A total of 267 students out of 380 graduated within four years while 33 dropped out and 38 continued to earn their diplomas beyond a four-year timeline.

American Indian students graduated from the district at a 42.9% rate for 2022, a 12.8% drop from 55.7% in 2021. Female students also outperformed males at the district level, 74.3% to 67.1% respectively.

The district’s homeless demographic included eight graduates out of 29 students, which leaves a 27.6% graduation rate down from 36% in 2021. Students receiving free and reduced lunches graduated at 53.1%, another decrease from 62.6% the prior year.

Regarding charter schools, TrekNorth Junior and Senior High �� trended downward from 91.2% in 2021 to 87.1% in 2022, or a difference of 4.1%. Male students graduated at a 93.3% rate compared to 81.3% for female students, and American Indians clocked in at 86.7%.

Voyageurs Expeditionary �� showed a graduation rate of 31.3%, or five out of 16 students receiving their diplomas. Voyageurs did not show a graduation rate for 2021.

Other area schools

Cass Lake-Bena High �� saw a notable increase in its graduation rate by 21.6%. About 83.1% of students — or 54 out of 65 — graduated compared to 61.5% in 2021. Forty-seven students, or 87% of the graduating class, were American Indian.

Red Lake High �� showed a 34.5% graduation rate, a 6% decrease from 2021’s rate of 40.5%.

Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig �� graduated 65% of its seniors, which is down 13.6% from the prior year’s 78.6% graduation rate.