Winter break is over and teachers and students are back to school, busy working their way through curriculum aligned with Minnesota's Academic Standards. The standard development process as we know it today was established in 2003 to replace the earlier Profile of Learning standards. A brief history of the evolution of academic standards in Minnesota is outlined on the Library's Academic Standards Guide. The Library also collects standards documents in each of the core curriculum areas, many of which have had recent updates and are included in this month's list of new materials:
Two additional reports recently added to the Library's collection look at other aspects of education in Minnesota as the second half of the school year gets underway.
The House Research Department's new report on K-12 Education Compensatory Revenue provides a broad summary of changes to the compensatory revenue formula over the past 50 years. This formula dictates how much funding schools that serve academically disadvantaged students receive each year. Compensatory revenue was also the subject of an OLA evaluation in 2020.
In 2023, the Legislature added a new reporting requirement for the Minnesota Department of Education, requiring an annual report detailing statewide class size ratios by grade. The second edition of this annual report was published in December: Class Size Ratios: Report to the Legislature. As the report notes, "class-size ratios are of public interest because research has shown there to be a relationship with student academic achievement."
Photo credit: Catherine Davis - Senate Media Services, April 25, 2025.