Benchmark Education Company (BEC) has reported improvement in reading proficiency at a diverse Minnesota elementary school where teachers received BEC’s Professional Development (PD). In this school, 8 to 10 percent more of the 229 participating students scored Proficient or higher in reading than the previous year, as measured by the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA-III) Reading Test. The gains were noted during a comparison of students’ scores in grades 3 to 5 in four demographically similar public schools—in the same district with the same curriculum—over the 2014–15 school year. Only one of the four schools, the only one where teachers received customized yearlong, monthly on-site BEC PD training, showed notable increases in students’ reading proficiency. The other three schools did not receive PD and experienced reading proficiency decreases.
As a result of the improvement in reading proficiency in the school with long-term BEC PD, the Minnesota school district expanded its PD contract in the 2015-16 school year to include teachers at all four of the elementary schools in the training.
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