Amanda Forrester / news@whmi.com

Students and staff at Stockbridge Community Schools are celebrating recent increases in academic performance this Friday.

“We are so proud of the efforts made by our staff to academically prepare and motivate our students to perform better on the most recently released standardized tests,” Superintendent Brian Friddle said. “The staff has worked extremely hard to implement research-based practices with fidelity while also focusing on what makes our school so special – the strong relationships built with our students. This combination, along with intentional efforts to motivate our students to do their very best, is starting to show up in our data, which is exciting.”

The Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress has ELA, math, science and social studies sections. It’s taken twice a year.

The district said they saw increases in all areas of the MSTEP, adding that it is “particularly encouraging” that grades 3 through 7 saw a 9.6% overall increase in math proficiency. Some grades increased by as much as 27% when compared to the previous year. Their 3rd grade reading scores increased to 47.3% from 35.2%.

Scores in science increased from 11% up to 20% across the tested grade levels, 5, 8 and 11. Social studies scores increased by 9.2% up to 15.9% in the same tested grade levels.

“We will continue to work to improve in all of these areas, but this is significant improvement from the 2024 testing cycle to the 2025 cycle, so we want to pause to thank our staff and students, as well as our families, for partnering together to make this happen,” Friddle said.

Staff and students at Smith Elementary, Heritage School and Stockbridge Junior and Senior High School will have “little surprise celebrations” on Sept. 12 as student results are distributed.

“We made a really big deal out of motivating our students to do their best and likened it to the way we do pep rallies for our sports teams,” Friddle said. “We encouraged our students to show what they can do, and we believe their efforts made a difference! Progress warrants celebration, so we are pausing to do just that.”