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The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests were not the only tests students in Albert Lea took last year, as students at St. Theodore Catholic School took Northwest Evaluation Association tests.

“They’re very comparable,” said Sue Amundson, principal at the school. “They still check to see if our kids are meeting the standards and different things.”

One notable difference between the two assessments: Immediate feedback, something Amundson appreciated.

“We get a score that day, and then when our window closes for testing then we can go on the site,” she said, adding getting immediate results helped them determine if certain students were missing particular skills.

Those students are then linked to programs such as IXL, Khan Academy or other learning tools in order to practice skills.

Students from kindergarten through fifth grade take NWEAs, and at three different times during the school year: Once in the fall, another in the winter and a final assessment in the spring.

Those in kindergarten and first grade take reading and math assessments, while students in second through fifth take reading, math and language arts. No students at the school take a science assessment.

“We backed out of that just because of the amount of testing time,” she said. “It does take awhile, and they do these on the computer.”

In the spring, 73% of kindergarten through fifth-grade students at the school ranked at or above the national norm in reading, while 77% of third- through fifth-graders were at or above the national norm in language arts. Sixty-four percent of students in kindergarten through fifth grade tested at or above the national norm in math.

Those numbers are consistent with last spring’s assessments, when 70% of kindergarten through fifth-grade students rated at or above the national norm in reading, and 78% of third- through fifth-grade students met or exceeded the norm in language arts. Last year, 66% of kindergarten through fifth grade students met or exceeded math norms.

The results were not surprising for Amundson.

“For the last several years we’ve been doing pretty good,” she said. “I’m pleased that we’re kind of keeping it up.”

They also helped assure her the school was doing what needed to be done, students were learning and St. Theodore School was helping them reach their potential.

Amundson said scores from last spring were higher than right before and immediately following the pandemic lockdown.

“The one thing we had going for us is we only closed (spring 2020),” she said. “…That was a hard one and stuff as far as the spring testing that year. We did miss the spring testing just because we didn’t know how to do it remotely, and we did not have enough devices for all the kids to [take] at home at that time.”

But because the school was able to re-open full-time that fall, St. Theodore’s could keep in-person learning, which was something she felt was critical.

“We found that too many times the kids when they were at home — parents, a lot of them were working from home — and it was hard for them to get the help that they needed or to get the support and different things,” she said, adding it was easier to work in a classroom where teachers could visually see which students were struggling.

According to Amundson, the NWEAs also vary tests in accordance with how students perform, meaning students who get a lot of questions correct early on will be asked harder questions later in the assessments that could be above their grade levels.

In total, there are 92 current students at St. Theodore’s Catholic School. By comparison, there were 89 students at St. Theodore last year.

Having immediate feedback also helped Amundson and her team to plan help for those who needed more individual attention. These individual progress reports are also shared with parents during conferences.

“We will have conferences in October, and the parents will get a copy of how [their student] did this fall to see where their scores were and different things,” she said. “Then we kind of tell the parents if their child needs some extra help or as far as if they’re doing really great or if they also scored low and we can say [a student] only took 20 minutes to do this test, it usually takes an hour or two.”

Another big difference: Students at St. Theodore’s don’t have the option to opt out of testing, which lets Amundson and her staff know where each and every student is at.

And if a child is struggling, Amundson and her team will first look at the student’s history, and ask if that student is a Title One, meaning they struggle or have a potential learning issue.

They’ll also look at the subjects a student is lowest in, determine what staff could do and if there’s something the school was missing.

Previously, the school had participated in the MCAs before switching to the NWEAs in 2012.

“We didn’t like, as far as the MCAs, that we would take them in the spring and you don’t get your results until the following fall,” she said.

St. Theodore started their fall assessments Sept. 11 and are currently in the midst of a three-week window to complete them. Winter testing will be in January, with their spring assessments in May.