Academics & Activities
ACT awards Concordia Academy-Roseville the Red Quill Award
On February 12, 2010, at the Minnesota state-wide ACT Conference, ACT officials presented Rev. Dr. Tim Berner, CA's principal, a plaque naming Concordia Academy-Roseville a 2009 recipient of the Red Quill Award.
ACT's Red Quill Recognition Program "honors educational professionals who recognize the need for diligent analysis of data and a willingness to develop and enhance curriculum and instruction based on community learning needs."
In his award letter, Red Quill Committee Chair, Phillip J. Daniel stated, "Your students have consistently demonstrated a high level of achievement that has been validated by meaningful data provided through ACT's College/Career Readiness System."
Principal Berner was excited to receive this award. "This award is independent recognition that we are succeeding in what we need to do at Concordia Academy-Roseville -- use data to improve student learning."
In his application for the award, Berner highlighted the Scope and Sequence Curriculum Conference held at CA-Roseville last spring. CA staff presented ACT's College Readiness Standards, to the more than 70 conference attendees from local grade schools and middle schools who then worked backwards from the standards in developing scope and sequence curriculum.
In addition to the conference, academic departments at CA followed through with goals set by the school's Curriculum Improvement Team. Each department was required to study and analyze the Item-Response Summaries for both the Explore and Plan tests in the ACT series. This allowed individual departments to focus in on their particular areas and fine-tune their curriculum.
Over 90% of CA-Roseville's students take the ACT. Concordia participates in the ACT testing series beginning with students in ninth grade.
The Red Quill Award was established in 2006 to recognize schools that are implementing innovative approaches to improve curriculum and have shown consistent growth in student ACT scores over time. The ACT exam is one of the most widely accepted exams used by U.S. colleges and universities for evaluating students seeking to enroll in an undergraduate program.