Parents, your child doesn’t have to take the survey

The 2025 Minnesota Student Survey (MSS) will be administered to students electronically in grades 5, 8, 9, and 11 between the months of January and June. The triennial survey is a collaboration between local schools and five state agencies identified as the MSS Interagency Team: the Minnesota Department of Education, the Minnesota Department of Health, the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the Minnesota Department of Corrections, and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

The statewide survey is voluntary at all levels — districts, schools, parents, and students can all choose to opt out. District participation has been steadily declining for the past several survey cycles, and student opt-outs have also ticked up.

District participation over the years
(the Minnesota Student Survey was first administered in 1989)

Students who do take the survey can skip any question or stop at any point, according to the MSS website. The MSS cover page tells students that some questions might make them “feel uncomfortable.” The survey is said to be completely anonymous and that “the data cannot be tied back to students or their families.” The 2025 data will be stored on the Minnesota Department of Education’s server.

The increasingly controversial state survey asks students questions on a wide range of topics and is pitched as a way to help “communities and schools develop effective programs and provide better services.” Critics have called out the survey’s personally invasive questions as a way for state agencies to justify more governmental interventions into families.

Parent/student opt-outs

Because the survey asks students questions deemed protected information under federal law (the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment), districts/schools that administer the MSS are required to notify parents of its upcoming administration and provide parents the opportunity to review the survey questions and opt their child out of participating.

According to MDE, two to four weeks prior to conducting the MSS, districts/schools should provide parents “a more comprehensive notification letter that describes the survey, informs them of their right to review the survey, provides space to opt their child out of participation, and identifies the dates in which your district will administer the survey.”

Unlike prior years, it was decided that the 2025 survey will not be publicly shared until its administration ends in June, according to MDE. Parents can review the survey for their child’s grade at their district office.

Sex, drugs, and rebellion

The MSS asks fifth graders if they have had alcoholic beverages, used tobacco products or marijuana, or sniffed glue in the past year. They are also asked if they smoked cigarettes in the last month, and if they have been in the same room or car with someone who was smoking cigarettes in the last week. Eighth graders and high schoolers are asked about use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, LSD, ecstasy, crack, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine, to name a few.

Other questions about rebellious behavior ask junior and high school students “how often” during the last 12 months they have run away from home, damaged property, beat up someone, and stolen something.

Eighth graders and high schoolers are asked to specify their gender identity and “mark all that apply” — agender, boy/man cisgender, boy/man transgender, girl/woman cisgender, girl/woman transgender, genderfluid, gender non-conforming, genderqueer, nonbinary, two spirit, questioning/unsure, identity not listed. They are also asked if people at school would describe them as “very or mostly feminine,” “somewhat feminine,” “equally feminine and masculine,” “somewhat masculine,” or “very or mostly masculine” based on their “appearance, style, dress, or the way they walk or talk.” Students are asked to select their sexual orientation from the following options: straight (heterosexual), asexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian, questioning/not sure, pansexual, queer, “I don’t describe myself in any of these ways,” or “I am not sure what this question means.”

Junior high and high school students are asked about their height and weight, if they have any long-term mental health, behavioral, or emotional problems, and if they have ever been treated for an alcohol or drug problem. Questions about their parents include whether they have ever been in jail or prison, if they regularly swear at their kids, insult them, or put them down, if they ever hit or kick them or slap, hit, kick each other. Other questions ask if there is anyone in the household who drinks too much alcohol, uses illegal drugs or abuses prescription drugs, or is depressed or has other mental health issues.

Eighth graders and high school students are asked if they have gambled in a casino, bought lottery tickets, or bought alcohol at liquor stores or at bars or restaurants. These students are also asked if their parents feel it is wrong or not for the student to smoke cigarettes, have one or more drinks of an alcoholic beverage nearly every day, use marijuana, vape, and use prescription drugs not prescribed for the student.

Sex-related questions for eighth graders ask whether a family member/relative or a non-relative/family member has ever “pressured, tricked, or forced” the student to do something sexual or done something sexual to them against their wishes. High schoolers are also asked this question, along with whether they have ever traded sex or sexual activity to receive money, food, drugs, or alcohol.

More intimate sex-related questions are asked of just high schoolers: Have you ever had sex? How many different partners have you had sex with during the last year? “The LAST time you had sex, did you or your partner use a condom or dental dam (barrier)?” What method or methods did you or your partner use to prevent pregnancy “the LAST time you had sex”? Have you talked with your partner(s) about STDs? Birth control?

Students are typically allowed a class period to complete the survey, and it takes around 30-50 minutes to complete it.

“The surveys and ‘screeners’ that students are increasingly asked to fill out at school look more like those one would expect to see in a pediatrician’s office, mental health facility, or gender clinic than what one might presume they would find” in a classroom, writes Erika Sanzi with the American Enterprise Institute.

“If parents want students, including their own, to be surveyed in this way, they should sign them up for that,” Sanzi concludes. But for parents who are hesitant to allow this personal information to be collected, even under the promise of anonymity, they “need to be clearly notified of exactly what information is being collected and must authorize the school to collect those data on their child.”