(FOX 9) – New data shows that Minnesota students made little to no progress in reading, math and science in 2024, and all scores are still well below pre-pandemic levels.
The results
Data from the Minnesota Department of Education shows that students who took the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment scored at about the same percentage across all grades and subjects.
Math results:
- About 45% of students in Minnesota were proficient in math, down 0.03% from the previous year.
Reading results:
- About half of Minnesota students had proficiency in reading, a decrease of 0.05% from the previous year.
The good and the bad
State data shows that student attendance rates increased in 2023. The number of students attending class 90% of the time in 2023 increased to 74.5% from 69.8% in 2022.
However, the assessment results showed little or no improvement compared to 2023 and remained far below pre-pandemic figures.
context
The test results show how Minnesota is struggling to recover from the pandemic’s impact on its education system. Nationally, the data shows that Minnesota has fallen behind other states in school performance.
Minnesota ranked 19th in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT rankings for education. Just two years ago, the state was ranked ninth in these rankings. (Note: The 2024 rankings were based on 2022 assessment data, and the 2022 ranking was created using 2019 data.)
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that Minnesota was below the national average in fourth-grade reading proficiency in 2022, lagging behind states such as neighboring Iowa and Wisconsin, as well as Kentucky and Mississippi, which have historically performed poorly in education.