Stop saying low proficiency is because of opt-outs
A recent CBS News article interviewed new Education Minnesota president Monica Byron on the state of education as she takes the helm of the teachers’ union, with reporter Esme Murphy reminding her and readers that less than half of Minnesota students are proficient in both reading and math.
According to Byron and Education Minnesota, the low proficiency is a “result from a critical statewide teacher shortage, and more students are choosing to opt out of tests,” continues the article.
“What we are seeing [is] there are fewer students taking the test and that actually impact[s] the proficiency score,” said Byron.
But as I have written here, the proficiency calculation of general test results only includes students with valid test scores. Student opt-outs are not calculated into a school or district’s Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) proficiency level and therefore do not lower these results.
Additionally, participation results show that 95.6 percent of Minnesota students took the math MCA in spring 2024 and 93.9 percent took the reading MCA, which are relatively the same as the percentages tested in 2023 (95.4 percent for math; 94 percent for reading) and are slightly higher than the percentages tested in 2022. So even if opt-outs were factored into a school or district’s general proficiency results, students are, in general, not opting out of the tests.
On average, Minnesota students spend less than 1 percent of instructional time taking statewide assessments each school year, according to MDE.
Perhaps there is confusion over how opt-outs work and what proficiency calculations they do or don’t get included in. (I clarify that here.) Or perhaps it is simply convenient to include opt-outs as a reason for low test scores.
Regardless of the reason, let’s stop using opt-outs as a cop-out for low proficiency and instead focus on what needs to change so that the education system improves in providing students the opportunity to meet the minimum proficiency expectations laid out in the state’s K-12 academic standards.