Highland Elementary School in Crookston has been named a Bright Spots Top School, a national recognition that honors schools beating the odds in third-grade literacy achievement.
The Bright Spots Project highlights schools whose third-grade literacy outcomes exceed what would typically be expected based on student demographics. The project was created to celebrate schools where students are thriving academically and to highlight the hard work and effort that goes into achieving those academic goals. Highland principal Chris Trostad gives credit for this honor to the teachers, staff, and students at Highland for striving to exceed expectations. “It’s a testament to the awesome teachers we have and the hard work that the kids put in, and it’s nice to know that we do better than what the average does, and sometimes a lot better than what the average does,” said Trostad. “I don’t teach a single student. These are the teachers who do this. We’ve just had really good teachers that work really hard, and I think we’ve done a lot of training from within to help our teachers become better teachers through mentor programs, and through professional learning communities, having PLCs was what we call them after school. So, anyways, just a testament to the teachers and the parents and the students, the awesome staff we have, and how hard our kids work and how hard our teachers work.”
When schools like Highland receive an honor like the Bright Sports Top School Award, Trostad sees an opportunity to showcase the hard work of Highland staff and students and to encourage families to enroll in Crookston schools. “When you compare us to other subgroups in the state of Minnesota, and what we’re supposed to achieve and what we do achieve, and that includes things like they break down lots of different groups, special needs. We have awesome staff here, gets great results also,” Trostad explained. “So, people in the community looking for a school to go to, we’re definitely a highly recognized school, and we’ve achieved significant growth year after year for our students, higher than what the state expects us to achieve.”
Bright Spots is a data journalism project of The 74, a nonprofit education newsroom that is dedicated to examining the issues impacting the education of America’s 74 million children.
