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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) ― A half-million Minnesota students turned in a testing report card remarkably similar to one from last year, a holding pattern that will land more schools on a list of underperformers.

The Minnesota Department of Education published results Wednesday for seven grades' worth of testing in reading and math. They showed mostly minor shifts in passing rates from 2008 to 2009. The main exception was among high school juniors, who posted an 8-point jump in math from the year before.

"Pleased, but not satisfied," state testing director Dirk Mattson said in describing the scores. "There's a lot of work yet to be done."

The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments II tests play a big role in determining which schools live up to expectations of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Students of all ages and backgrounds must show continual gains from year to year or their schools can be forced to provide tutoring, replace staff or make more drastic changes.

Last year, 937 schools fell short of the federal goals. When a new list is released in August, Deputy Education Commissioner Chas Anderson expects it to be even longer, with more than half of Minnesota's public schools.

There are rumblings around Washington that the federal expectations could change soon, but it's not clear yet how.

Until then, it's easy for the public to get lost in the results: an Excel spreadsheet listing grade-by-grade and school-by-school data runs 11,400 lines long.

Naturally, local school leaders focus on their own results and match them up with state patterns.

In the small western Minnesota district of Wheaton, Superintendent Daniel Posthumus said the state tests are only a slice of achievement tools his staff uses. Students also take computer-based tests in spring and fall to assess progress during the school year, with children needing more attention measured more often.

All the information, Posthumus said, feeds into curriculum decisions and how the district intervenes with struggling students. He cautions about putting too much stock in the state tests, which are taken in April.

"We can't just use test scores to drive our district. We have to take everything into account," he said, adding, "This is one day, one snapshot of a child's year. Sometimes students have a bad day."

In Hibbing, parent Marcia Grahek sits on an advisory panel that reviews district test results and helps set goals.

She finds value in the tests and said her district has used them to best align the curriculum to state standards. In the past, Hibbing students have largely beat the state averages in reading but lagged some in math.

"You can't change what you don't know, so that's where testing is needed," Grahek said. "As soon as they get the feedback, each department really evaluates and starts making changes."

The tests begin in elementary schools at grade three, cover every middle school student and are given once per subject in high school.

They gauge how well students at each grade are doing at keeping up with state academic standards. Results are grouped into four proficiency categories: does not meet standards, partially meets standards, meets standards or exceeds standards. The passing rate combines the top two.

As in the past, the youngest students had the highest proficiency rates in both subjects — with third-graders posting success rates of 82 percent in math and 78 percent in reading.

But the oldest made the largest percentage gains when stacked against their prior year peers. In math, almost 42 percent of high school juniors met or exceeded academic expectations this year compared with about 34 percent in 2008. In reading, sophomores climbed above 74 percent from just shy of 71 percent the previous year.

Anderson attributed the bump in high school math performance to higher stakes. This year was the first that passage was part of a graduation requirement. But Anderson said the Legislature has suspended that requirement going forward, which she worries will reduce motivation among test-takers.

The multiple-choice math tests cover all the basics.

The exams focus on addition-and-subtraction type questions in the early grades and algebra is prominent in the high school version. A sample third-grade math question asks how much more money "Nora" would need to buy a $17 video game if she already has $8.

Reading tests include multiple-choice and short-essay questions. A sample test for sixth-graders includes a short story about explorer Marco Polo. It asks students to pick a phrase representing the main idea, choose the correct definition of "embellish" and offer a couple of reasons why he'd be an ideal travel companion.

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