By Joanna Miller, Correspondent 

Preliminary statewide totals show that 10th-graders’ reading proficiency increased in 2008.

The Minnesota Department of Education announced this week that 75 percent of these students met the state’s new, more rigorous reading graduation requirements.

The state also announced that 71 percent of these students were proficient on the reading MCA-II test, which is a nine-percent increase over last year’s score.

More than 65,000 students took the MCA-II reading assessment.

Complete reading and math MCA-II data, including school and district data, is set to be released on June 30.

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) results are set to be released on Aug. 5.