Minnesota students’ academic performance stagnates after pandemic declines

Minnesota students aren’t making progress in math and reading after significant declines in proficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to statewide standardized assessment data released in late August.

Fewer than half of Minnesota public school students are meeting grade-level expectations on math and reading exams given in May – 43% in math and 48% in reading, staying roughly the same from 2023 and 2024.

The data comes from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, exams given to students in grades 3-8 in reading and math, with additional reading and math exams in grades 10 and 11.

This year’s results show students have yet to recover from the pandemic’s profound interruption to learning in the form of school closures and remote classes. Proficiency rates this year are 10 percentage points lower than they were in 2019, the last year for state assessments before the pandemic closed schools, when 54% of students were proficient in math and 58% in reading.

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Wide gaps in proficiency persist between white students and students of other races and ethnicities. While about 52% of white students in Minnesota met grade level standards in math, just 21% of Black students reached grade level proficiency, for example. Similarly large gaps exist in reading proficiency.

Test scores are stagnant despite nearly $2 billion in federal pandemic aid that Minnesota districts could spend between 2020 and 2024, plus historically large increases in state education funding in recent years.

On the bright side, slightly more students are consistently attending school. In the 2023-24 school year, 75.5% of students attended at least 90% of school days, up 1 percentage point from the 2022-23 school year. Minnesota reports attendance data on a one-year lag, so the 2024-25 data won’t be available until next year.

In the 2024-25 school year, the state allocated $5 million in the 2024-25 school year to 12 districts for pilot programs to combat chronic absenteeism. No additional funding for the program was included in the biannual state budget approved in June.

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The state is in the midst of a multi-year effort to transform the way students are taught to read through improved teacher training and evidence-based reading curriculum. The state does not expect those efforts to improve test scores until some point in the future.

Education Commissioner Willie Jett said the state’s investments in universal free meals are also part of investments in education that the state expects to lead to improved outcomes for students in the future.

“While standardized test scores are valuable for measuring progress, they are just one piece of the puzzle. True success is seen in the resilience, creativity and critical thinking our students show every day,” Jett said.

Schools will typically share individual students’ results with families in the fall.

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared Aug. 29 in the Minnesota Reformer. It was written by Melissa Whitler, a local education reporter with a background in economic analysis and a Minneapolis Public Schools parent.