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

 Table 8b represents a comparison of attendance percentages by grade and gender for

K-12 students between 2003-2004 and 2005-2006.

Table 8b – Comparison of Attendance percentages by Grade, 2003-2004 to 2005-2006

 
Graph I: Total number absences including excused and unexcused, by grade level and gender for K – 12 grades

Graph II: Comparison of total number of absences by gender

Graph III: Comparison of excused and unexcused absence by gender 

Graph IV: Excused and unexcused tardiness by grade level

Excused tardiness was lower when compared to unexcused tardiness (184/215) ({excused/unexcused}). The highest number of excused tardiness was seen among 9^th grade students, followed by 1^st grade students and 3^rd grade coming next.

Unexcused tardiness was relatively high school wide. The highest number of unexcused tardiness was observed in 8^th grade, followed by 7^th grade. 

Transportation  Top

All 438 students that attended the Academy during the school year 2005-2006 used the school bus transportation, as was the case last year.

Teaching Staff Information   Top

Higher Ground is committed to hiring highly qualified individuals to teach at the school. Thus, the Academy made a concerted effort to attract certified and experienced individuals. As a result, the Academy utilized less number of “community experts” during the 2005-2006 school year.

Table 10 represents teaching staff information by name, file folder number, and teaching assignment. The table does not include classroom aides.

Table 10 - Teaching Staff Information

 Teacher turnover rate was low during the 2005-2006 school year only one teacher that we had at the beginning of the school year, did not finish the year with the Academy. The teacher resigned due to family reasons.

Governance   Top

A Board of Directors consisting of two school administrators, two teachers, three members of the community, one parent/teacher and one parent govern the Higher Ground Academy. The following is a list of the names of board members and their titles.

Richard Rolle, Chairperson: Vice President St. Paul Urban League

Carl Schoenbeck, Vice Chairperson: Vice President, Concordia University, Saint. PaulSusan Moore, Community member

William Wilson, Executive Director 

Samuel Yigzaw, Director of Curriculum & Assessment, Higher Ground Academy 

Ismail Samatar, Teacher, Higher Ground Academy 

Brenda Hasan-Jackson, Teacher and parent, Higher Ground Academy 

Odessa Bond, Teacher, Higher Ground Academy 

Accountability Data, Program Successes and Problems, 2005-2006 

A financial report for the reporting year covering revenues and expenditure is attached to the report. (See section on attachments.) 

Academic goals set for the 2005-2006 school year  Top

The academic goals set for the reporting year were:

1. Higher Ground Academy was to continue making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in compliance with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Higher Ground Academy was to continue to make programmatic changes that would lead to better student performance on the Statewide Assessments. Higher Ground Academy is one of the few charter schools that have made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2003-2004, 2004-2005, and 2005-2006 academic school years according to preliminary reports.

Despite its AYP status and other indicators such as increasing enrollment, high attendance rate and low discipline incidences its sponsor, the Saint Paul Public Schools (SPPS), had placed Higher Ground in ‘probation’. Specifically, the sponsor did not deem academic programs at Higher Ground Academy strong. As a corrective action, Higher Ground Academy agreed to take the following:

                                                 I.      Fill all teaching positions with fully licensed individuals.

                                              II.      Train teachers on methods and principles of standard-based teaching

                                           III.      Provide teachers with additional classroom resources.

Other major areas of contention between HGA and its sponsors, the SPPS were:

                         I.      Student Wellness

                      II.      Provision of quality educational service to English Language Learners (ELL)/Limited English Proficient (LEP) students.  

In regards to student wellness, the details were administration of student medication, maintenance of health records, immunization, early childhood screening, reporting child abuse, and reporting communicable diseases.

2. Students were to continue achieving mastery of basic skill at or above grade level standards. Evidence of this would be the performance of students on MCA and BST tests as well as school-administered standardized posttest. Higher Ground Academy was to seek to have above average progress for all groups in reading and mathematics, participation, attendance, and graduation. We made above target progress in all groups in school year 2004-2005 and made a commitment to continue doing so for the 2005-2006 school year.

3.      In the school year 05-06, Higher Ground Academy was to continue improving thinking skills i.e. both creative and critical thinking skills of students. Evidence of this would be the quality of students work on assigned performance tasks.
Towards achieving these goals, the Academy took the following measures:

I. Renewed its curriculum by:

a)     Making available to teachers and students additional resources that supplemented the A+ curriculum. New textbooks, Everyday Mathematics, Leveled readers, Manipulative, and CD ROMs were purchased in the classrooms.

b)     Continuing to provide online resources for children so that they could access the curriculum from home. Students had continued access of the school’s curriculum via the Internet. Computers were provided to more than one hundred families that did not have one.

c)      Recruiting highly qualified teachers. The Academy filled all teaching positions with “highly qualified” teachers.

d)     Using Title 1 funds effectively to support students’ basic skills school wide. The Academy has a school-wide model that helps students across the board as opposed to the pull out model.

e)     Providing financial assistance to teachers who want to improve their teaching skills by taking college courses.

f)       Providing students opportunity to participate in post-secondary courses. Higher Ground Academy collaborated with East Metro OIC (EMOIC) to create opportunities for students to take post secondary option courses. In the school year 2004-2005, 24 students participated in the East Metro OIC (EMOIC) program. In 2005-2006 school year 17 students were registered. 

          II.     Maintaining the partnership with the University of Minnesota, Concordia

   University and other area institutions of higher learning in the area of

      staff development and teacher training so that resources were shared. 

    III. The Learning Year Program: Beginning June 05, Higher Ground Academy had
                 a Learning Year Program. Students who are lagging behind in their academic

skills specifically new immigrant students, and others who want to excel in school participated in the Learning Year Program. These students were taking additional classes for credits. The new immigrant students were taking English Language and mathematics courses while the other mainstream students who want to excel were taking a computer refurbishing class. The Learning Year classes were offered on Saturdays and after school. 

Non-Academic Goals  Top
The following are the school’s non-academic goals for the current year. 

1. In school year 2005-2006, Higher Ground Academy was committed to be in compliance with the requirements of the state and its sponsor the SPPS on all matters related to students’ health and wellness. To that end, the Academy had taken the following measures:

A.    Contracted the services of Minnesota Visiting Nurses Association (MVNA) to have oversight and provide consulting services as it related to students’ health and wellness.

B.     Required the Academy’s nurse’s assistant to obtain certification as a Certified Nursing Assistant.

C.     Worked with the Sight and Hearing Association for the purpose of conducting health screening of all students in the areas of vision and hearing.

D.    Worked with Ramsey County Child Protection Services to provide training to staff on how to report suspected child abuse.

E.     Provided training to staff, in collaboration with the Crisis Prevention Institute on Nonviolent Crisis Intervention.

2.      Fully implemented the teacher/parent/student compact (compact replaces previous parent involvement model).

3.      Work with students and parents to reduce the student attrition rate by 50% from   

       the 2004-2005 rate.

4. The Underground Railroad project helped connect the students with the realities      of the journey from the plantations to freedom. The Academy took the

      students a step further to let them know what life in West Africa was before the  

      journey began out into the seas to the point of freedom. 

Academic successes, Problems and Accountability Data  Top

Pre-test: K-12

In school year 2005-2006, Higher Ground Academy continued to use GRADE (Group Reading Assessment & Diagnostic Evaluation) and GMADE (Group Mathematics Assessment & Diagnostic Evaluation) for the purpose of pre and posttest. 

The GMADE and the GRADE are norm referenced standards-based assessment of Mathematics and Reading skills. They are developed as diagnostic tools to see what mathematics and reading skills individuals have and what skills they need to be taught. 

All Higher Ground Academy students took the GMADE and GRADE test at the beginning of the school year. The tests were computer-corrected. The result was individual student diagnostic profile and classroom summaries that provided information on error patterns made by individual students and a group of students in classrooms. This information was used to divide classes into clusters for instructional purposes and write Individual Learning Plans (ILP). 

Table 11a     

Average Mathematics scores, pretest, and posttest by grade level using the GMADE

 Table 11b     

Average Reading scores, pretest, and posttest by grade level using the GRADE

Kindergarten, 3^rd 5^th and high school made the most improvement in reading and math during the year. The data shows that there was more improvement in reading than there was in mathematics, although both disciplines registered considerable gains in students’ performance. 

In the 2005-2006 school year, the Minnesota Department of Education phased out the BST. Only students in grades 9-12, who took the test the previous years and did not manage to pass it, had to retake it in 2005-2006. As a school with a good record on the BST, only a few of our students had to retake the test.

MCA GRADE 3, 5, 7, 10 & 11 COMPARATIVE DATA   Top

The following table shows the average score of students on MCA II grades 3, 5, & 7 percentages and learning areas for 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 school years. The data from the 2005-2006 MCA II is not officially released by the MDE yet. Therefore the table shows only the data from previous years.

Table 12  - MCA II Test results by grade and learning area 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 average scores

 The table below shows MCA 10^th grade & 11^th grade results in percent proficient in reading and mathematics (2002/2003 to 2004/2005) school years. Test results from MCA II are not officially released by the MDE. Like the table above, Table 13 shows test data from the previous 3 years.

Table 13 

In school year 2003-2004 and school year 2004-2005 Higher Ground Academy made AYP. As the performance of Higher Ground Academy students on MCA showed, HGA made significant improvement in both reading and mathematics in the school year 2004-2005. In both subjects, the proficiency level of our students was above the AYP targets. It is particularly important to note that in mathematics our performance rate was more than 10 points higher (76.28%) than our AYP target (64.34%). More importantly, in grade 11 mathematics, the mean scale/score of HGA students was higher than the State Wide mean scale/score (1570/1547). This is quite impressive for a school that has a large concentration of ELL and Title 1 students.

According to the preliminary results from the 2005-2006 MCA II assessment, HGA made AYP in 2006. The preliminary report showed that while we did very well as a school, there are some grade levels where the performance levels of our students are below targets stipulated for our school. In particular, the performance of our middle school students especially in reading, were low. Therefore, the middle school will be one area that we would pay close attention to in our school year 2006-2007.

Graph V: Reading MCA trend data from 2000/2001 to 2004/2005

Graph VI: Comparative data – Mathematics MCA trend data from 2000/2001 to 2004/2005

In conclusion, HGA continued to improve and make AYP since the school’s first year of enrollment in 2000-2001. This is primarily a function of the Academy’s commitment to offer quality education to all its students and continuously improve its services to students. More importantly, it is a result of the dedication and commitment of all the staff of the Academy to the philosophy and vision of the school that “all children can learn.”

Other Measures:

Academic Support for Needy Children:  Top

In the school year 2003-2004 we created a program – the Academic Enrichment Program – to increase students’ opportunity to function at or above grade level focusing on skill building based on the need of the individual students. The academic Enrichment Program continued to provide service to students in 2004-2005. Students functioning below grade level in reading and math came to school every Saturday morning for additional help in these areas.

While the Academic Enrichment Program was successful in many aspects, the program suffered from students’ irregular attendance. The program was competing with other culturally-based programs offered by external sources on Saturdays. As a result, many needy students could not benefit from the Academic Enrichment Program. 

In response to that issue, in school year 2005-2006 we redesigned the academic Enrichment Program by rescheduling it from Saturday mornings to the end of each school day. In order to do that, we extended the school day from 6 hours to 7 hours every day. The additional hour was used to provide support for needy students. Funding for the program was obtained from the Bremer Foundation and through the “Minnesota Low Income Tax Credit” Program.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Earn as You Learn Scholarship Program Top

 The Martin Luther King Jr. Earn as You Learn Scholarship Program awarded a total of 302 scholarships ranging in value between $100 and $200 to K-12 grade students during the reporting year. The program is designed to provide each deserving student with a scholarship for higher education upon graduation and acceptance into an accredited liberal arts or technical college. The program is significant in a number of ways. First and foremost, it makes students aware of college early in their life. Second, it provides needed financial assistance. Third, it serves as an incentive for students to stay focused and do better each time.

Student Discipline   Top

At Higher Ground Academy, we believe that discipline revolves around students’ lack of competencies in academic basic skills expected of their age and grade level. Students

who are unable to participate effectively in the academic life in the classroom due to their lack of skills often engage in disruptive acts. The school, in resolving this lack of basic skill competencies, placed emphasis on creating a school climate where individual learning and growth was valued beyond stigmatization of age-level students lacking grade-level competencies. Adequate support was availed of teachers, classroom aides, university mentor-tutors, and peer cooperative classroom work. The students were also given multiple venues for exhibiting and receiving recognition for their academic and all rounded endeavors and growth. 

In addition, parents were centrally involved throughout the year, through regular open house gatherings where parents and students met collectively and individually with classroom teachers to assess and discuss students’ ongoing learning and improvement.

Citizenship Development Program   Top

The Citizenship Development Program, developed in the spring of 2002-2003 to assist and work with students who break or violate the student code of conduct and cause disciplinary problems, continued its function in 2004-2005 school year. Higher Ground Academy views discipline as a teaching and guiding function rather than a punitive function. Teaching and guiding students on how they should behave in certain situations is a central role and outcome of the Citizenship Development Program. This is a more proactive approach to discipline more especially as there is an increased visibility of the Citizenship staff at all times. 

When a student’s behavior or conduct is outside of the limits of the student code of conduct, he/she is referred to the Citizenship Development Program. A review is done to assist the student in recognizing, identifying and taking ownership for their contribution to the problem. The student stating what corrective action he/she will take in future enters into a contract or agreement. 

If the student again violates the student code of conduct, additional consequences can be added including assignment in the school site, and depending on the seriousness of the situation, home based suspension can be instituted.

Skills Streaming  Top

Skills Streaming is a positive progressive discipline program that the Academy adopted for elementary students.

Fourteen areas of inappropriate behavior were identified and students would be referred to the Citizenship Development office for any three of such violations with each one varying from 5-10 points. Students who violated the codes of conduct and lost more than 15 points in a week lost fun Friday. 

Fun Friday was developed as an incentive to have the elementary students stay in check with their behavior for the week and have fun on Friday afternoon. Fun Friday was between 2:30 p.m. and 3:45 pm Teachers would show movies and the school would provide popcorn. A second loss of Fun Friday got the student into losing their fitness center privileges. At this time it was assumed that the student lacks the skills to follow rules and regulations of the school. The students would then be placed in the Skill Streaming session to learn the pro-social skills that became recurrent in their referrals. Skills Streaming is a curriculum for teaching pro-social skills co-authored by Arnold P. Goldstein & Ellen McGinnis with Robert P. Sprafkin, N. Jane Gershaw, & Paul Klein (1980). A student stayed in the skill streaming session for at least two weeks two or three times a week depending on his/her schedule for recreation or physical fitness. 

Behavior Incidents in 2005-2006   Top

The number of behavior incidents reported in 2005-2006 decreased from the previous years. In school year 2004-2005, a total of one hundred and eighty-two (182) behavior incidents were reported school-wide. That number declined to one hundred and seventeen (117) in school year 2005-2006. While this is a positive change, the number is still high when compared to school years 2003-2004 and 2002-2003 where only eighty-two (82) and seventy (70) incidents were reported respectively. 

Parent Involvement   Top

During the 2005-2006 school year, the Academy had a total enrollment of 438 students which includes about 241 families. Work schedules and transportation problems limited participation of some parents in the affairs of the school. Most parents indicated their interest and willingness in working with the Academy to improve the overall education environment and operation of the school. In terms of setting policy for the school, 2 of 7 Policy Board positions were designated for parents. 

Parent Involvement and education sessions were conducted by the Academy. This was done via the computer. In 2005-2006 school year, the Academy provided more than 100 computers to the families. This is in addition to the more than 200 computers that were provided the two previous school years to families so as to be able to assist their children and monitor the student’s progress at home. This enabled parents to constantly be aware and be a part of the academic needs of their children.

School Finances   Top

A financial report for the reporting year covering revenues and expenditure is attached to this report. (See section on attachments)

Academic Goals for the current year  Top

The following are academic objectives set forth for the current year:

1)     Higher Ground Academy will continue making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in compliance with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Higher Ground Academy will continue to improve and refine programs in order to improve student learning. Higher Ground Academy is one of the few charter schools that have made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 academic school year. According to preliminary results HGA made AYP in the school year 2005-2006.

Even though HGA made AYP in the school year 2005-2006, the preliminary test results showed that the Academy’s students performance on the MCA II, especially in the middle school, were lower than the previous years. Our goal for 2006-2007 is to improve the learning opportunities for the students school wide and in doing so , pay particular attention to our middle school. 

2)      Students will continue to achieve mastery of basic skill at or above grade level standards. Evidence of this will be the performance of students on MCA II and BST tests as well as school-administered standardized pretest and posttest. Higher Ground Academy will seek to have above average progress for all groups in reading and mathematics, participation, attendance, and graduation. We made above target progress in all groups in the reporting year and will continue doing so for the current year. 

In the school year 06-07, Higher Ground Academy will seek to continue improving thinking skills i.e. both creative and critical thinking skills of students. Evidence of this will be the quality of students work on assigned performance tasks.
Towards achieving these goals, the Academy has taken the following measures:

I. Continue its renewed curriculum by:

a)     Making available to teachers and students additional resources that supplement the A+ curriculum. New textbooks, Everyday Mathematics, Leveled readers, Manipulative, and CD ROMs have been purchased in the classrooms.

b)     Continuing to provide online resources for children so that they can access the curriculum from home. Students will have continued access of the school’s curriculum via the Internet. Computers have been provided to more than one hundred families that did not have one.

 II.  Recruiting highly qualified teachers. The Academy filled all teaching positions with “highly qualified” teachers.

                   III.In school year 2005-2006 we experimented with a school-wide model for our Title I program. While in many ways we found the school wide program productive, we are forced to return to the “targeted assistance” model by the severity of the academic need i.e. learning gap observed in some of our students. Therefore in school year 2006-2007 HGA will return to the practice of providing Title I support only to the neediest students. As in previous years, HGA will have on Title I classroom referred to as the Accelerated Learning Program in Reading and Mathematics program for lower elementary students. There would be two more such classrooms, one each for upper elementary and middle school program. We did not have the Accelerated Learning Program in Reading and Mathematics program for our middle school program. The program is added to our middle school program in response to the need observed by our teachers. Also the MCA II test results from school year 2005-2006 confirmed the need.

                     IV.      Providing financial assistance to teachers who want to improve their teaching skills by taking college courses.

                       V.      Providing students opportunity to participate in post-secondary courses. Higher Ground Academy collaborates with East Metro OIC (EMOIC) to create opportunities for students to take post secondary option courses. Last year, 24 students are participated in the East Metro OIC (EMOIC) program. This year 17 students are registered. 

          VI.   Maintaining the partnership with the University of Minnesota, Concordia

   University and other area institutions of higher learning in the area of

      staff development and teacher training so that resources could be shared. 

  VII.  Learning Year Program: Beginning June 05, Higher Ground Academy has    
a Learning Year Program. In school year 2005-2006 students who were lagging behind in their academic skills specifically new immigrant students and others who wanted to excel in school participated in the Learning Year Program. These students took additional classes for credits. The new immigrant students took English Language and mathematics courses while the other mainstream students who wanted to excel took a computer refurbishing class. The Learning Year classes were offered on Saturdays and after school. In the school year 2006-2007, the learning year program will expand to have more students. 

Non-Academic Goals
The following are the school’s non-academic goals for the current year. 

1. In school year 2005-2006, Higher Ground Academy is committed to be in compliance with the requirements of the state and its sponsor Concordia University on all matters related to students’ health and wellness. To that end, the Academy will continue taking the following measures:

a)      Contracting the services of Minnesota Visiting Nurses Association (MVNA) to have oversight and provide consulting services as it relates to students’ health and wellness.

b)      Require the Academy’s nurse’s assistant to keep certification as a Certified Nursing Assistant current.

c)      Will worked with the Sight and Hearing Association for the purpose of conducting health screening of all students in the areas of vision and hearing.

d)     Work with Ramsey County Child Protection Services to provide training to staff on how to report suspected child abuse.

e)      Provide training to staff, in collaboration with the Crisis Prevention Institute on Nonviolent Crisis Intervention.

f. Fully implement the teacher/parent/student compact (compact replaces previous parent involvement model).

g. Work with students and parents to reduce the student attrition rate by 50%    from the 2004-2005 rate.

h.  The Underground Railroad project helped connect the students with the     realities of the journey from the plantations to freedom. The Academy is taking the students a step further to let them know what life in West Africa was before the journey began out into the seas to the point of freedom.

Conclusion   Top

In many ways, year seven brought a lot of successes to the Academy. Some examples of the successes are, the improved student attendance, increase in the number of highly qualified teachers who taught at the Academy and continuing to make Adequate Yearly Progress. HGA has improved services to our LEP/ESL students and being recognized in the state as one of the few charter schools in Saint Paul, making Adequate Yearly Progress. In the Special Education section, we were cited for non-compliance of certain aspects. In the reporting year HGA continued to improve on every level and got commendable reports for compliance from the state and our sponsor. As a result of these improvements, student learning increased. Evidence to that is the performance of our students both on the school administered standardized test and the state administered tests of basic skills on the BST and MCA.

Student attrition continues to be a challenge. Although we have succeeded in reducing the numbers, we continue to impress on parents the importance of continuity in a child’s learning environment. Our immediate goal is to reduce the attrition to about 60-80% and ultimately eliminate the problem. 

We will continue to diligently address the problems/challenges that we had the previous years and continue to improve on the things that we did well. We remain committed to collaborating with all stakeholders including with our new Concordia University of Saint Paul, Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools.