The Crookston School District is now a month into the school year, and Crookston High School Principal Nicki Martinez is continuing towards the goal of improving literacy. Specifically, the High School is looking to improve their reading and writing scores in the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) testing administered by Minnesota.
Martinez says transitioning into this school year with COVID-19 has been the most challenging part in working towards those goals so far. “I think there have certainly been some transitions to deal with,” said Martinez. “We went from COVID-19 to kids working in isolation, to now putting them back together to have them thrive together, so it’s been a big transition to get back to where we are now.”
Martinez also talked about how literacy is being focused on with the new curriculum in place. “The literacy portion is maybe a bigger focus than it has been in the past,” said Martinez. “They were focusing somewhat on literacy before COVID-19 hit, and now this time around, we’re making sure students have time each week to read and write. We’ve implemented a minimum of Twenty minutes of reading and fifteen minutes of writing each week where students stop what they’re doing and devote that time to improving those skills. It’s been cool to see teacher’s lesson plans and how they’re incorporating that.”
Martinez is a former English teacher and understands the importance of reading and writing. The twenty minutes of reading and fifteen minutes of writing is new this year for Crookston High School. Martinez has been a part of a similar exercise at other schools she’s been at and has seen first-hand how it can help and improve students’ grades.
Over the summer the School Board also emphasized their want to see improvement in reading scores in the MCA Testing. The board came up with three targets to achieve for the next three years. The targets set by the school board include seeing scores back to where they were before COVID-19 began for the first year, a 4% increase for the second year, and another 5% increase in the third year. These goals are lofty, but if accomplished, Crookston would be one of the highest performing School Districts in the state.
Martinez talked about a few programs that can be used throughout the school year to help project where students are trending in reading and writing growth. “Crookston uses a testing program called FastBridge, and it does help monitor reading growth and where kids are starting from,” said Martinez. “These companies that provide these services partner with the state standards and write their questions around the standards that will see growth. We can then look at the benchmarks and tailor our curriculum for the students depending on where they need work.”
For the entire conversation with Crookston High School Principal Nicki Martinez, you can tune in to KROX Saturday at 8:35 a.m. for the Focus on Education program. Martinez also talks about her favorite parts of the school year so far and how tight-knit the community of Crookston has been. You can listen on 105.7 FM, 1260 AM, or by clicking “Listen Live” at the top of this page.
