Agency Description: Minnesota New Country School (MNCS) is a teacher-owned charter school, part of a Minnesota-based education collaborative called EdVisions. Students ranging from grade 7-12 travel as many as 100 miles roundtrip to attend this modern, one-room, 17,000-square-foot “schoolhouse.” School runs throughout the year, in five- to seven-week blocks. Following each school block, staff have a planning week in which they document student achievement, work with individual students, write grants, and address the business concerns of owning and operating a school. Though students create their own academic programs built around projects, the daily schedule includes required periods of quiet reading and math. Students keep a daily log of how they spend their time and complete detailed self-assessment rubrics. Most MNCS graduates attend four-year colleges, many earning full scholarships. Their mission is "exploring the world through project-based learning."

ACET services: ACET prepared the “Evaluation Report: 1999/2000 Stanford Achievement Test Scores.” The purpose of the report was to examine MNCS students’ academic progress in reading, mathematics, and language.   An analysis of the fall 1999 and spring 2000 test scores yielded the key findings as presented in the Evaluation Report.

Date of Service: 1999-2000