5 things to know about Minnesota's low test scores

INTERVIEWER: Here's another story we're following. For decades, Minnesota students have outperformed their peers nationally on standardized tests. But new scores from national math and reading exams for fourth and eighth graders show a sharp drop in performance for both subject areas. Scores plummeted across the country despite hopes that students have begun to regain some lost ground from the pandemic. No state saw improvements between 2019 and 2022.

So where do we go from here? For help, we called up Matt Barnum. Matt is a national reporter for Chalkbeat and a Spencer Fellow at the Columbia Journalism School.

Matt, welcome to Minnesota Now.

MATT BARNUM: Thanks for having me.

INTERVIEWER: So there were these sharp declines between 2019, the last year this specific standardized test was administered, and this year, 2022. What do we know about how it has actually affected student performance?

MATT BARNUM: Yeah, I mean, so this is our clearest and most definitive data. And what we can say is that in math, the declines are the largest we've seen on record since 1990. And it's a little different-- it's a little difficult to exactly characterize, but we've seen the percent of students who are proficient fall by several points.

And it's definitely clear that these are very large declines in math. Now, results are still higher, scores are still higher than in 1990 than when students still first took the test, but they're a lot lower than they were in 2019. In reading, the results were also pretty bad, though not quite as-- the declines weren't quite as sharp. But we saw declines across the board in grade eight and grade four reading as well.

INTERVIEWER: Can all of this be pegged to pandemic lockdowns and online learning or is there something else going on?

MATT BARNUM: Well, I think it's fair to say that the pandemic had a whole lot to do with it. But untangling what aspects precisely of the pandemic drove these results is difficult or impossible to do with this data. So on the one hand, we do have evidence from more granular data looking at districts that students did better or lost less ground when they received more in-person instruction and that the virtual learning just was not nearly as good as in-person instruction.

But what we've also seen with these test scores, these NAEP scores, is that the declines were really across the board. They were in-- every state in the country saw a decline on at least one test, and most saw declines on multiple tests. Every region, virtually every type of school, virtually every student group saw some decline. And so it doesn't seem to be-- it seems to be that there was this sort of broad-based effect of the pandemic. And I think that's also important to note as well.

INTERVIEWER: However, we received a statement from the Minnesota Department of Education pointing out that Minnesota's scores have been sliding downwards since about 2017. And national trends show some prepandemic declines as well. What do we make of that?

MATT BARNUM: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in math, the declines that we saw recently, between 2019 and 2022, were really unprecedented. So we had seen some flattening and some dips in scores in math before the pandemic. But here, between '19 and 2022, it's just a real sharp decline, which suggests this is clearly something about the pandemic that is driving down scores over and above anything we were seeing before the pandemic.

What's interesting is that in reading in the couple of years between-- right before the pandemic, between 2017 and 2019, there were also declines that were roughly in the same ballpark as what we saw between 2019 and 2022. And that, to me, is just a bit of a puzzle. I wouldn't have predicted that the declines would be-- that we have seen declines similar to what we saw in the pandemic, right before the pandemic.

I'm not sure what's going on. One thing that is important to note is whenever we're seeing changes in test scores, there are so many factors that go into student learning, student achievement, trends over time. It's very clear that the pandemic hurt student achievement. But precisely exactly isolating how much that was and what aspect of the pandemic, that's impossible at this point.

INTERVIEWER: Did we see a worsening gap between kids of color and white students?

MATT BARNUM: So the answer to that question was that it varied. On some tests, we did see some evidence of that, particularly talking about Black and Hispanic students. But on two of the tests, we really didn't see any evidence of that. We also didn't see any evidence on this test of widening of gaps between low income and middle and high income students.

Now that is in contrast with some other research we've seen. So I was expecting, going into these tests, that we would see widening of these test scores and opportunity gaps that already existed. And on this test, the evidence was a little mixed on that front, to my surprise.

INTERVIEWER: You touched on this a little bit, test scores are not the whole picture when it comes to evaluating student performances, right? Are there other ways of looking at how well our students are performing right now?

MATT BARNUM: Yeah, I mean, so test scores are the coin of the realm in education.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MATT BARNUM: But a lot of people and researchers understand that they also miss a lot of things. And so we don't have nearly as good evidence outside of test scores, but I think it's exactly right that they're incomplete pictures of student performance. What I can say is we have seen dips, or at least flattening, of high school graduation rates.

And we had-- for the past decade or so, we had been seeing a very steady upward climb in high school graduation rates. And the pandemic essentially had ended that, at least in the prior year where we have-- where we have data available. And so that's a concern. We've seen student grades, in some cases, in high schools decline.

And we've also seen absenteeism increase, student attendance go down. Now, some of that reflects the pandemic precautions themselves, like quarantines. And so it may not be that students are disengaged from school, though I think that's part of it as well. But the fact that kids are missing more school suggests that that's a real problem, and that's an outcome itself that I'm concerned about.

INTERVIEWER: Hmm. None of this sounds good at all. I'm wondering-- because you are correct when it comes to test scores being the coin of the realm when it comes to education-- are there ways, new ways that schools are hoping to improve scores?

MATT BARNUM: So, yes. And let me, as a partial answer to that, let me do-- let me offer one bit of silver lining to you and your listeners, which is we have seen in some of the most recent data from the end of last school year-- that's not this data that just came out but some other data that we've got, we've started to see students, especially in younger grades, start to recover just a little bit of the learning loss that they've experienced.

So there does seem-- it seems like the pandemic created this big hole in student learning. And it seems pretty clear that we've stopped digging, so that's good, and also that we're starting to fill that hole. But that-- the fill-- the hole is still very big, and we really need to accelerate that if we actually want to ever fully close that gap in achievement.

So the schools and districts have tried a lot of strategies. They've hired more people, hired more teachers, in some cases they've hired tutors, in some cases they've added new curriculum or virtual online tutoring, online curriculum. They've also offered summer school, expanded summer school programming, expanded after-school programs. So that's been the big strategy, adding optional time, adding additional teachers, adding some form of tutoring.

And I think there's some evidence that that can work. But one thing I am concerned about is that because these programs are optional, not all students are going to participate in them. And I think if you're a school leader, you have to be-- and many are already doing this-- very careful to ensure that the kids who are participating in these optional add-on programs are the ones who really need the extra help. You don't want those kids to slip through the cracks.

INTERVIEWER: Interesting stuff here, Matt. Thank you so much for your time and for your reporting. We appreciate it.

MATT BARNUM: Thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

INTERVIEWER: Matt Barnum has been with us. He's a national reporter for Chalkbeat. He's also a Spencer Fellow at the Columbia Journalism School.