SD Smarter Balanced + SD Science, SY 2024-25
All grades, all students. % Proficient.English Language Arts
48.0%
State avg 50.3%
District avg 54.8%
County avg 56.8%
+14.7pp since 2022-23
Mathematics
33.1%
State avg 47.5%
District avg 43.3%
County avg 49.2%
+11.1pp since 2022-23
Science
42.6%
State avg 44.3%
District avg 45.3%
County avg 48.4%
+3.3pp since 2022-23
What this means: On the SD Smarter Balanced + SD Science, South Dakota's statewide test, about 48 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 33 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 43 of 100 are at grade level in science. Across all South Dakota schools, those numbers are about 50, 47, and 44. Reading and writing scores are up about 15 points since 2022, while math scores are up about 11 points and science scores are up about 3 points.
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
UNDERPERFORMING
Bottom 10% of SD schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
33.9%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
53.9%
based on SD schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
-20.1pp
below demographic expectation
What this means: About 34% of students here test proficient in math and reading, below the roughly 54% typical for South Dakota schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations compares each school with others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school lands here when its results trail those comparable schools, which is not the same as having low scores. A higher-scoring school can still fall in this tier if similar schools score higher still.
BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual.
How this is calculated →What is SD Smarter Balanced + SD Science?
SD Smarter Balanced + SD Science is the statewide standardized test administered by South Dakota public schools.
What does "% Proficient" mean?
It is the share of students at the school who performed at grade level or above on the test, summed across the top two of four performance levels. A higher number is better.
What does 48.0% mean for English Language Arts at Beresford Middle School - 03?
It means about 48.0 percent of students tested at Beresford Middle School - 03 performed at grade level or above on the SD Smarter Balanced + SD Science English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for South Dakota that year was 50.3%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in South Dakota, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
South Dakota Department of Education, Smarter Balanced (ELA + Math) + SD Science Assessment. School-level All Students subgroup, current-year column from the SD Report Card MicroStrategy export. Headline metric is the cumulative SBAC Level 3+4 / SD Science Proficient+Advanced rate.
How often is it updated?
SD Smarter Balanced + SD Science is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.