By Lexi MooreHills-Beaver Creek was among 22 Minnesota school districts recognized as academic "outperformers" by Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Service.To be identified as an "outperformer," a district must consistently outperform demographically similar school districts. Standard & Poor’s, an independent research company, found that 332 school districts in Minnesota had sufficient data for analysis. Of the 349 districts, 22 or 6.6 percent outperformed similar school districts in reading and math proficiency for consecutive years.The company uses three fundamental criteria to identify outperforming schools. The first is that school districts must achieve higher levels of student proficiency than peers. Outperformers must have higher percentages of students who score at or above state standards on reading and math tests than other school districts.The elementary school scored 94.9 percent in both math and reading, while the high school scored 87.8 percent in reading and 79.5 percent in math.The second criterion is that districts must perform at a level that significantly exceeds statistical expectation. Meaning that schools must achieve proficiency levels that fall above the level for the expected performance.The final criterion is that schools must outperform consistently for at least two consecutive years.The company developed the analysis used to identify outperforming districts as a way to highlight outstanding academic performance and to help educators in school districts with similar demographics identify appropriate benchmarks to guide their own improvements.