Austin Public Schools District dropped in the Multiple Measurement Rating scores from last year, but Neveln Elementary School and Southgate Elementary School were named “celebration eligible” for making progress in closing achievement gaps.

The Minnesota Department of Education released 2015 Multiple Measurement Ratings data Tuesday, showing two-thirds of Minnesota public schools are on track to meet achievement gap goals in reading and math by 2015, but most Austin schools saw their scores drop.

“Obviously we’ll be looking at these internally and which areas of specific focus we want to pay [attention to],” Educational Services Director John Alberts said.

The MMR are measurements from Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments taken across the state.

It measures four categories: proficiency, which looks at student scoring and sub-groups in schools and whether they’ve reduced the achievement gap; growth, which measures students’ growth from one year to the next; academic gap reduction, which compares historically lower performing sub-groups to their historically higher performing peers; and graduation rates, which looks at rates for 2013 and 2014.

“We have set an ambitious goal,” Minnesota Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius said in a statement. “Every year we ask our schools to meet tougher and tougher targets, and every year I am inspired by the incredible dedication and passion of our educators to meet these targets and increase student achievement.”

While most schools in the district dropped percentage scores, Alberts was excited that Neveln and Southgate — two of the district’s four tested Title I schools, which applies to schools with above average poverty — received celebration status.

“A big takeaway for me was that we had some really nice performance obviously based that two of the schools were identified as Celebration eligible,” Alberts said.

Focus, reward and celebration status only affects those schools that receive Title I funds, which go to schools with a higher than district average percentage of free and reduced lunch. Some of the district’s schools qualify and some don’t.

In the Austin district, all the school sites except I.J. Holton Intermediate School dropped in total MMR points, where I.J. went to 24.92 percent this year from 8.74 percent last year. Austin High School dropped to 35.06 percent from last year’s score of 52.71 percent, and the elementary schools all dropped, with Banfield Elementary School being the biggest jump at 7.61 percent this year compared to last year’s score of 48.63 percent. Ellis Middle School also dropped to 21.74 percent this year from 45.14 percent last year.

Alberts said it was too early to tell where each school needed to focus on improvement. He noted the tests are affected by incoming students who haven’t tested before, as the elementary schools test third- and fourth-grade students, but third-grade students haven’t had this type of testing before.

“That is one thing that does impact it,” he said.

Every school can receive up to 25 points per category for how well students performed on the MMR scores. This equals to 75 possible points per school, besides the high school which can receive up to 100 points with the added graduation rate category, which only applies to the high school. The points are then converted to the overall percentages.

“We just have to keep making strides to make sure that all students are achieving and all students are growing,” Alberts said.

The MMR also measures a focus rating, which determines how well schools are focusing on lowering the achievement gap. State officials use the same achievement gap data under the MMR while also looking at how well non-white and non-privileged students performed on the MCA. If the scores are not good, the school could get a focus rating designation.

A few years ago, Southgate received a focus rating designation because it had achievement gap issues, but ultimately they have gotten off that list. This year, no district schools received a focus rating designation.

—The Associated Press contributed to this report.