Vermilion Country to receive major state grant

TOWER— The Vermilion Country Charter School has received a $117,000, two-year state grant that will provide the school with additional resources to boost student achievement through at least 2019.

Known as the Alternative Delivery of Specialized Instructional Services, or ADSIS, the state-funded program is designed to enhance educational services for students who have yet to achieve proficiency in various academic subjects but who don’t otherwise qualify for special education. The funds will allow the school to direct additional teaching time to boost student achievement in key areas, particularly math.

The school has made remarkable strides in its first four years in improving student proficiency in reading. Indeed, first year results indicated that the incoming student body at the school had limited proficiency across the board, with just 13.8-percent of students proficient in reading. But students at the school have demonstrated dramatic growth in reading scores, as proficiency has jumped significantly for the fourth year in a row. Preliminary results from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, or MCAs, show another year of solid gains in reading scores, according to school administrator Kevin Fitton. If final results, which the state will release in August, confirm those gains, it would represent one of the most dramatic and consistent improvements in reading ability of any school in the region, if not the state.

It’s all the more unusual, given that nearly a third of students at the school qualify for special education services and nearly three-quarters qualify for free and reduced lunch. Typically, schools with high percentages of special needs or low-income students perform more poorly overall on standardized tests— but Vermilion Country has proven to be an exception.

Math instruction, meanwhile, has been a slower go, although school officials expect to see some positive growth this year when the final MCA results are released this summer. The ADSIS dollars will be directed to more math intervention with students who continue to lag behind, with a goal of bringing those students up to proficiency.

“We’re really excited for the opportunity to build on the progress we’ve been able to make for our students already,” said VCS board chair Jodi Summit. “We’ll be maintaining our reading specialist to ensure we continue our success in the subject, and now we’ll be able to bring in additional math intervention thanks to this additional funding. Our goal is to show similar gains in math as we’ve seen in reading and science.”

The ADSIS program is a state-funded program designed to provide early intervention services to students who are at risk of a special education designation, without additional academic help. “If students aren’t keeping up, they tend to fall further and further behind and that can lead to a special education designation,” said Fitton. Once that happens, notes Fitton, educational costs “go up dramatically.”