by Jennifer Johnson • Daily News
Published/Last Modified on Friday, August 21, 2009 3:06 PM CDT
High school seniors at Campbell-Tintah School in Campbell, Minn., scored high on the ACT, significantly beating out the state average.
In mathematics, the school's score was 28.3 compared to the state average of 22.7; a score in English of 27 to 22; a score in science of 25.3 to 22.6 and a score in reading of 27.3 to 23.1.
Although new to the district, Superintendent Wayne Olson credits the scores to a healthy relationship between students and small class sizes.
On average, each class holds 11 students.
In larger schools, for instance, three sections of 30 students would make it harder for a teacher to adjust and meet student needs, he said.
"With small classes, if something isn't working for a student, teachers kind of automatically adjust," he said. "You get to know them so well, you can really work to address students with a proper teaching style."
Roughly one-third of students headed into the service after graduation, and Olson guessed they did it to eventually go back to school.
The rest of the class applied to North Dakota State College of Science and a few directly entered into the workforce.
Excited by the good news, Olson said the school has to be doing something right to hit scores that high.
"I think it's just a real positive for the teaching staff that we have down here," he said. "Starting at kindergarten through the senior year, teachers have really laid a good foundation for students, giving them an opportunity to excel. Those are pretty good results by any account."
