Fewer than half of Minnesota students meet math, reading standards as state weighs testing changes
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
Fewer than half of Minnesota students are proficient in math and reading. That’s according to new data from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments released on Wednesday.
In reading, 48.6 percent of Minnesota students met the state’s grade-level proficiency standards. In math, only 44.9 percent of Minnesota students met the state’s proficiency-levels.
The math scores are a dip from 2025’s rate of 45.21 percent. In reading, this year’s statewide test is an updated version that “cannot be compared to versions previously administered.”
“We’re asking more of our students and teachers,” said Minnesota Commissioner of Education Willie Jett in a written statement. “In this data, we see the hard work Minnesota educators are doing to create safe and supportive learning environments and implement new, rigorous standards. We see where students are on their journey toward meeting those standards. And we see the potential for growth.”
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
‘Students felt afraid’
The MCAs are conducted statewide every spring. This year, the tests were administered from March 20 to May 8 — a time period during which many schools were still dealing with the far-reaching effects of Operation Metro Surge.
More than 80 percent of school leaders in Minnesota said the immigration enforcement surge negatively impacted their students’ ability to learn. More than 1,000 students dropped out or unenrolled, according to a survey from the University of Minnesota. Thousands more missed school.
In Bloomington, school officials surveyed students about the surge and 16 percent of respondents in grades 6-12 said that immigration enforcement affected them or their families. Another one in five said they preferred not to share.
For Julio Caesar, executive director of research, evaluation and assessment at Bloomington Public Schools, those results are indicative of how the surge impacted kids.
“Here in Bloomington last winter, many students and families were afraid, and we have evidence that students felt it,” Caesar said.
“Especially our high school students. Not only they did not feel safe coming to school, but they also shared that they had to take other responsibilities at home that they did not have prior to Metro Surge starting,” Caesar added.
The surge’s potential impact on test results is one reason Caesar is being nuanced about his interpretation of this year’s MCA test results. Another reason is that he knows many students opt out of the exam. In some districts, according to one report, as many as 60 percent of students opt out of standardized testing. High school students are among the least likely to take the MCAs — approximately 75 percent take the math test and 85 percent take the reading test.
“We need to examine that participation effort before treating (the) high school average as a complete picture,” Caesar said. “Our students at the high school level do not want to spend their time taking a test that has absolutely no consequences for them, no buy-in, where they can be spending their time doing something else.”
New reading tests
The reading test Minnesota students took this year was different from last year’s exam. The update is due to the state’s newly revised language arts standards. This year’s tests, in addition to measuring students’ ability to understand and analyze what they read, also tested whether students were able to judge a source’s credibility, interpret images and consider an author’s perspective.
The tests are not yet able to measure the results of Minnesota’s Read Act, which was passed in 2023.
State officials say nearly 80 percent of the teachers required to get updated training in literacy instruction have already completed their science of reading instruction. Still, the MCA test scores, which begin assessing students in third grade, are not expected to begin showing the results of Read Act changes until 2027.
“When an intervention like this happens — and it’s a massive intervention — it is not an overnight thing. It will take us a few years for us to see the major impact that it has,” Caesar pointed out.
Still, state officials say schools are already seeing “encouraging results” from early literacy screening data, which shows over 70 percent of kindergarten students ended the 2025-26 school year at or above benchmark levels. In first grade, 86 percent of students met benchmarks for phonemic awareness.
Big picture
While Minnesota test scores have not changed dramatically since last year, they are still not back to where they were before the pandemic.
Julio Caesar said that, when he compares Minnesota’s test scores to other states or compares national test scores to levels achieved in 2019, American students are still struggling to learn at the levels they used to before the pandemic.
“We’re seeing scores being lower than they were before the pandemic and making very little gains from the start of after the pandemic,” Caesar said. “It’s not a Minnesota story alone. It is something we need to pay attention to.”
Caesar believes ongoing struggles with regular attendance and an overdependence on screen time may be to blame.
“We have evidence … that links days with more screen times to students falling asleep later, which means they’re coming to school tired, which means they’re not able to focus,” Caesar said.
Changing the MCAs
Minnesota is considering ways it might change its annual K-12 academic testing procedures. The state education department is convening a task force in October to make recommendations for possibly updating the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.
“We keep hearing over and over from our educators, from parents, from students themselves …that our assessments are not really providing the real-time, detailed information … that is needed to inform instruction,” said Angela Mansfield, assistant education commissioner.
Officials say the task force should have recommendations by March 2027.
