Vision 2020, Mercer Island School District’s vision and mission for student education, released a profile of student performance measured against established indicators for the 2012-13 school year. The focus areas included fine arts, health and fitness, literacy, math, science, social studies and world languages.

The report featured strong showings in several of the focus areas.

In literacy and communications, percentages ranged from 88 and 92 percent of 4th, 7th and 10th grade students exceeding state assessment standards for reading and writing.

For math, between 85 and 99 percent of students exceeded state assessment standards, with 71 percent of 4th-graders exceeding 76th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills math exam.

Between 88 and 93 percent of 5th, 8th and 10th grade students exceeded science assessment standards. In the areas of social studies and health and fitness, 88 percent of seniors reported meeting the key indicator of taking more than five semesters of social studies. Nearly 74 percent of all students reported being physically active for at least one hour a day for 4 or more of the last 7 days.

Only fine arts and world languages reported less than three quarters of students meeting the established indicator. Just under half of all 2013 seniors reported they completed two or more years of the same fine art, while 16 percent of students reported they took at least one fourth year, fifth year or AP world language course.

While percentages of students reporting to have taken at least one AP course were low, the percentage of students taking AP exams and scoring 3 or higher (an AP score of 3 qualifies for college credit) remained high in the fields of literacy, math and science.

World languages and social studies were the only subjects to report below 90 percent, at 82 and 68 percent respectively. The percentage of total AP students with scores 3 or higher for MIHS was 79 percent, above Washington state’s 61 percent and the global 60 percent. In MIHS’ five-year school score summary dating back to 2009, 2013 reported the school’s highest total number of AP students with 338. 2009 was next highest with 319.

What may come as no surprise, responses regarding engaged and supportive learning varied between students and staff. More teachers responded that “students in MISD are engaged in learning,” while a lower number of students responded that “work I do in school is useful and interesting to me.” More teachers responded that “instruction is personalized to meet the needs of every student”, while a lower number of students responded “my teacher(s) often tell me how I am doing in their class.”