Annual Report 2005-2006

Student Demographics 
Student Demographic: Enrollment, average class size and teacher-student ratio
Student demographics: Race 
Student demographic: Title 1 (Free and Reduced lunch)
Student Demographics: Student Turnover 
EBD = Emotional/Behavioral Disorder
LEP/ESL Program. The Multi-Age Classroom
Student Participation
Transportation
Teaching Staff Information
Governance
Academic goals set for the 2005-2006 school year
Non-Academic Goals
Academic successes, Problems and Accountability Data
MCA GRADE 3, 5, 7, 10 & 11 COMPARATIVE DATA
Academic Support for Needy Children
The Martin Luther King Jr. Earn as You Learn Scholarship Program
Student Discipline
Citizenship Development Program
Skills Streaming
Behavior Incidents in 2005-2006
Parent Involvement
School Finances
Academic Goals for the current year
Conclusion

Student Demographics    Top

The student population that matriculated into Higher Ground Academy during the course of the 2005-2006 academic year fluctuated between 402 students at the beginning of the year and 441 students by the middle of March 2006. This number fluctuated during the course of the year at different grade levels. By the end of the school year we finished with a population of 438 students. Although there would be some variations in some sections of student enrollment, most of the data for the total number of students’ enrollment in the subsequent sections would reflect the 438 students we finished with by the end of the school year.   

Student Demographic: Enrollment, average class    Top
size and teacher-student ratio 

Despite the significant number of students who transferred in and out of Higher Ground Academy during the school year 2005-2006, enrollment fluctuated. We started the school year with a sharp decline in enrollment. We attribute the decline in enrollment that was observed at the beginning of the school year to the bad publicity resulting from a highly unfavorable review by our previous sponsor, the Saint Paul Public School District. We finished the previous year with an enrollment of 441 students. At the start of the 2005-2006 school year, we only had 402 students enrolled. Enrollment continued to increase during the school year reaching the peak in March 2006 with 441 students. 

Higher Ground Academy had two classrooms per grade for Kindergarten through 4^th grade. The other classes, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th, had single class enrollments with one middle level and one high school ELL. We had three combined high school level, 9^th/10^th, 10^th/11^th, and 11^th/12^th classrooms.  

The average classroom size remained fairly constant with a ratio of 23 students per teacher. The table below shows a break down of the school’s profile of the year in operation, by enrollment, class size and teacher to student ratio per grade level. 

Table 1 – Enrollment, Average Class Size, Teacher to Student Ratio for year 6

 Student demographics: Race   Top

The 2005-2006 profile of the school with regard to race is broken down in table 2a below by grade level. Categories include Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asians. 

Table 2a - Student Demographics by Race and Grade Level Clusters  

 Table 2b - Student demographics by National Origin and Grade Level Clusters

 Student demographic: Title 1 (Free and Reduced lunch)  Top

90.2% of the students who attended Higher Ground Academy during the school year 2005-2006 received free /reduced lunch. Table 3 below presents the total number and the percentages of students who either received or did not receive free and reduced lunch during the school year in operation. The student turnover, which was related to this student characteristic, is not factored in the representation. 

Table 3 Title 1 and Non-Title 1 Student and Percentages.

 Table 4a shows the total number of students, number of those receiving free and reduced educational benefits by grade level. 

Table 4a Free and Reduced Educational Benefits by Grade in 2005-2006

 Further analysis on all grade levels indicates that students between K-3 grade levels had the highest percentage of free and reduced lunch in regards to the total enrollment. The lowest percentage of free and reduced lunch came from the upper grade students i.e. 7-12 grade level. Again it should be noted that there would be variations in the numbers due to the fluctuating enrollment experienced in the course of the year. 

Table 4b Percentage of Students receiving FREE/REDUCED Education Benefits by Grade Level Clusters

 It is noteworthy that a little over 90% of the student population at Higher Ground Academy received free and reduced lunch. As a salient indicator of students’ background, this finding had varied impact on the academic and administrative management of the school during the ending sixth year of operation. 

Student Demographics: Student Turnover   Top

During the course of the school year 2005-2006, a total of 158 students transferred out of the school. This was a significant increase compared to the previous year where we had only 90 students transferring out during the course of the year. We however, attribute the situation to the strained relationship resulting from bad publicity we had with our former sponsor. 

Table 5 – Student Turnover Rates by Semester and Grade level Clusters

 Student demographics: Special Education 

Higher Ground Academy’s student demographics with regard to Special Education indicate a total of 36 students. In the elementary (4^th-6^th grade), 17 students received services and 19 students received services in the 7^th – 12^th grade. 

Specifically, 3 students had Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD) in the school. Eighteen (18) students had Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) and three (2) students

with Other Health Disabilities (OHD). Eight (8) students had Developmental Cognitive Disabilities (DCD) and four students (4) were Speech/Language impaired and one student with deaf and hard of hearing.  

Table 6 represents the number of students in each category of disability school wide.

 KEY

EBD = Emotional/Behavioral Disorder  Top

SLD = Specific Learning disability

OHD = Other Health Disabilities

DCD = developmental Cognitive Disabilities

SP/Lang = Speech & Language 

Student demographics: English Proficiency/ESL 

Of the 438 students who attended Higher Ground Academy in the 2005/2006 school year, 313 (71.5%) were Somalis, and 57 (13%) were Oromos. These two groups gave a total of 370 (84.5%) of the entire student population. Out of the 313 Somalis, 134 or 81.7% had limited English proficiency and out of the 57 Oromos, 30 (53%) also had limited English proficiency. The total number of students and percentage that had limited English proficiency during the year in operation Somalis and Oromos combined stood at 164 or 37.4%. Table 7 below breaks down the number of students with limited English proficiency by grade level clusters. 

Table 7 – Limited English Proficiency

LEP/ESL Program. The Multi-Age Classroom  Top

During the school year 2005-2006, Higher Ground Academy had an all day ESL class for elementary students grades 1-5 with a fully licensed ESL instructor. There were 16 ESL students in the elementary with no English background and these were put in a multi-age ESL classroom. Other students who had some English Language background had a pull out mode of ESL instruction. 

The secondary students whose English Language background was limited had a bilingual program taught by bilingual instructors. Higher Ground Academy had one bilingual classroom at the middle school level and another at the high school level. Higher Ground Academy had 43 middle and high school age LEP students who were either Somalis or Oromos. The students were organized into two groups based on their level of performance on pretest administered by the school at the beginning of the school year. Group 1 comprised of those students who had some English language exposure and group 2 for new immigrants who were new to the country and the English language. Bilingual teachers instructed both groups. Curriculum for group 1 was reading, writing and mathematics while group 2 had bilingual science and bilingual social studies in addition to reading, writing and mathematics. Some students in group 2 had some background in mathematics and science but had limited proficiency in the English language. 

The remaining one hundred and thirty one (131) students with limited English proficiency, all of whom were of East African decent, received service in the mainstream classroom with the “inclusion” model. Some of those students had lived in the United States for three years or more and still exhibited limited proficiency in the English language. 

Student Participation  Top

This section will report on the Academy’s student information on attendance and mobility. 

Student Participation: Attendance 

Higher Ground Academy students attended school most of the time during its sixth year of operation. The mean average of attendance for female students from K-12 was 96.45%, a 0.61% increase from the year before. The mean average attendance for male students from K-12 was 96.73%, an increase of 1.16% in attendance. There was more or less the same rate of increase for male and female students in the reporting year. Both the male and female attendance increased slightly in the year in operation. The number of excused absences for female students went down from 45% to 33.7% and unexcused absence went up from 55% to 66.3%. A similar improvement in attendance was observed with the male students. Excused absences for male students went down from 36% to a significant 33.5% while unexcused absence went up to 66.5%. 

Given the importance of attendance on overall learning and student performance, time and analyses will be invested into the section following. To tease out insights and highlights, the analyses will use grade and gender comparisons. 

Analyzed by grade level and gender, 4^th grade male students had the highest attendance (97.63%), followed by second (2^nd) and third (3^rd) grade male students (97.54%) for both groups. The female attendance could be ranked in the following order: 10^th grade (97.48%) in first position, followed by 3^rd grade (97.16%) and 7^th grade (97.07%). Eleventh (11^th) grade females had the lowest attendance rate (93.38%) proceeded by twelfth (12^th) grade males (94.72%).  

It was noticed that unexcused absence was far greater than excused absence school wide, K-12. Kindergarten female students had the highest excused absences (64%) followed by kindergarten males (58%) and 9^th grade females (44.9%) coming in third position. Incidentally, 12^th grade females had the highest rate of unexcused absence (100%). All absences were unexcused. Tenth (10^th) grade females also exhibited a high incidence of unexcused absences (88.2%) followed by 2^nd grade males (87.5%) and 3^rd grade females (86.7%). Gender wise, female students had the highest unexcused absences (79.3%) as opposed to male students unexcused absences registered at 76.8%.

School wide, female students registered the highest attendance rate in the following four grade levels (7^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th), while male students registered their highest attendance rate in the following nine grade levels, (K, 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 11^th, and 12^th). The average percentage rate for female students’ attendance through the four grades mentioned above is 96.8%, while that of the males through the nine grades mentioned is 96.84%. School wide, male students registered a high rate of excused absences in 7 out of 13 grade levels. These were 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 6^th, 8^th, 10^th and 12^th grades. Kindergarten: (65/58), 1^st grade (41.2/31), 2^nd grade (44.4/32.3) 3^rd grade (41.7/32.6), 4^th grade (43.6/39.6) 5^th grade (65.1/33.8), 6^th grade (41.6/29) 7^th grade (45.3/34.9), 9^th grade (44.9/38.5), 10^th grade (34.9/29.1), 11^th grade (38.9/17.8) and 12^th grade (36.3/29.2), {M/F}. 

There was a significant difference in male/female attendance in the following grade levels: 2^nd grade (26.9/23.5), 3^rd grade (40.4/34.9), 4^th grade (35.1/24.8), 8^th grade (56.7/32.2), 10^th grade (41.6/38.5), and 12^th grade (38.3/33.0). 

Table 8a presents attendance percentages by grade and gender for K-12 students, including the total averages for each gender. The table also portrays both excused and unexcused absences by grade and gender school wide, with total averages for each gender. 

Table 8a – Attendance Percentages by Grade and Gender