Mississippi students showed slight growth on the state tests that they took during the 2009-10 school year, according to data released today by the state's Department of Education.

And those results left school leaders with mixed feelings of satisfaction and, to some degree, disappoinment.

"I'm pleased with some things, but we have room to get better," said Pontotoc City Superintendent Adam Pugh, echoing many of his counterparts across the region.

The results came from a variety of tests administered last year:

- Students in third- to eighth-grades took the Mississippi Curriculum Test, Second Edition for language arts and math during the spring.

- High school students took Subject Area Tests in four content areas: Algebra I, Biology I, English II and U.S. History.

- Fourth- and seventh-grade students took a writing test.

- Fifth- and eighth-grade students were given a science test.

All of the tests ranked students as minimal, basic, proficient or advanced, except in writing, where a 0-4 scale was used.

The results of these state tests will be used to rank schools and districts from Star to Failing under the state's accountability model. Those results will be released in September.

This was the third year that elementary- and middle-school students took the second edition of the Mississippi Curriculum Test, which was redesigned to make it more rigorous and more closely aligned with national norms.

The percentage of students scoring proficient and advanced on this year's MCT2 increased from 2007-08 in every grade level, except third-grade math, which dipped two percentage points to 49 percent.

A few increases

The most significant increases came in seventh-grade language arts and seventh- and eighth-grade math. The number of students scoring proficient and advanced on each of those tests has increased by nine or more percentage points from 2007-08.

Several of the other scores increased by two or three percentage points.

"I am pleased that we continue to make incremental progress by students that scored proficient and above, particularly grades five through eight in mathematics," state Superintendent Tom Burnham said in a press release. "Language arts is showing slow but steady progress in grades three through seven."

Results were mixed across Northeast Mississippi, with some superintendents pleased with their progress and others hoping to have seen more improvement.

"I was pleased with our algebra scores, but the other scores weren't as good as we wanted," said Tishomingo County Superintendent Malcolm Kuykendall. "We had improvement in almost everything, but we didn't improve to the level that I was anticipating."

Last year, the Booneville School District had some of the best scores in the state and was rewarded by being ranked a Star District. This year, the district ranked in the top five in the state in fourth- fifth- and eighth-grade language arts.

The district also scored particularly well on the English II and Biology Subject Area Tests.