Wrong-way growth across reading and math achievement levels

Many parents assume their kids are doing well in school because report cards suggest they’re on track. But grades don’t always reflect how much students have learned. Grade inflation has only widened that disconnect.

That’s where standardized tests, for all their shortcomings, can still serve a purpose. They provide an objective benchmark that report cards can’t. For policymakers, school leaders, and parents, it’s a consistent way to compare performance across schools. Over time, this makes it easier to see where schools are succeeding, where they’re falling short, and whether students are meeting grade-level expectations in reading and math.

Minnesota uses the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) to measure how well students are meeting the state’s academic standards. Student performance falls into one of four categories: Exceeds, Meets, Partially Meets, and Does Not Meet. Students in the first two categories are considered proficient. Those in the latter two are not.

The goal is for more students to move into the Meets and Exceeds categories, while fewer remain in Partially Meets and Does Not Meet.

American Experiment has tracked Minnesota’s reading and math proficiency for years, and the trend remains troubling. More than half of Minnesota students still aren’t meeting grade-level standards in either subject.

COVID gets much of the blame, and extended school closure decisions certainly didn’t help. But the downward trend started years earlier.

The MCA achievement levels make that clear. From 2014 to 2019, before any COVID disruption, the share of students in the Does Not Meet category for math increased 15 percentage points, while Partially Meets increased 2 percentage points. Meanwhile, the percentage of students meeting grade-level expectations fell across the board. Meets dropped 7 percentage points, and Exceeds declined by 9.

Reading followed a similar pattern. The share of students in Does Not Meet rose by 9 percentage points, Partially Meets ticked up slightly, and both Meets and Exceeds fell by 5 percentage points.

These results are not skewed by opt outs. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, district and school general proficiency rates are calculated using only students with valid test scores.

Then COVID and school closures hit, and five years later most districts still haven’t recovered. Today, based on the most recently available 2025 data, 30 percent of Minnesota students are in the Does Not Meet category for reading and 33 percent for math; another 20 percent fall into Partially Meets for reading and 23 percent for math. Only 36 percent of students meet grade-level expectations in reading and just 28 percent do in math, while 14 percent exceed expectations in reading and 17 percent in math.

No standardized test is perfect. But that doesn’t mean the results should be ignored. The Minnesota Department of Education itself reports a “strong positive relationship” between MCA performance and ACT scores. Minnesota’s average ACT score is now the lowest recorded since at least 1996. There’s also a large body of research that links standardized test performance to outcomes like educational attainment, employment, and earnings.

The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results back up state assessment results. Minnesota’s 2024 fourth-grade reading and math scores are still well below 2019 levels. State officials called the results “steady” because they barely changed from 2022, but the 2022 results were already the weakest Minnesota had posted in decades.

Plenty of states are still below their 2019 levels too. But some, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, have recovered more quickly despite far less school funding than Minnesota. Minnesota’s average per-pupil spending has gone from roughly $13,000 in 2020 to over $17,000 today. How funding is spent matters greater than how much is spent.

Given that Minnesota’s academic decline has been evident since at least 2014, it’s long past time policymakers pursued structural reform — such as accountability for results and empowering teachers and families — rather than writing bigger checks to the same broken system.