Bemidji eighth-graders take basic skills test in April

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

March 27, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

As the rest of the state's eighth-graders are determining if they passed the first hurdle -- the graduation standards basic-skills test -- toward graduation last week, Bemidji's eighth-graders are only gearing up at this time to take their test -- the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

The Bemidji School District will be administering the Iowa Basics in April, while most of the state administered the graduation standards test in January, said Bemidji schools Superintendent Rollie Morud. Being school districts were allowed to choose which test their eighth-graders would take, the times at which the schools test will vary.

Morud said each test has a "norming period," in which the test is typically administered. The Iowa Basics norming period happens to be in April, which is why the district is using the test, he added.

"We wanted the kids to have the benefit of the whole (eighth-grade) year," he said. "If you take the tests in January ... hey, whoa ... you lose a lot of classroom instruction."

The Iowa Basics are comparable to the graduation standards test in that basically the same skills are tested. Morud said a testing expert with the state Department of Children, Families and Learning has assured him the tests are "comparable."

"The number of kids who will the graduation standards test) will pas the (Iowa Basics). The number of kids who will fail that test will fail this one," he said. "There is a strong correlation between the tests."

Morud said the only exception to those testing in April were this year's ninth-graders who failed the test as eighth-graders last year. The state required them to take the test in January.

The numbers are still being studied, he said.