Each year, as they did last month, state officials release scores from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests. But why are the tests important, how are they used and what should parents know about them?
Test results from the 2024-2025 school year showed Minnesota student proficiency levels in math and reading stayed relatively flat from the previous year. Statewide, 45.2% of students met or exceeded standards in math and 49.6% met or exceeded standards in reading, both slightly down from the previous year.
Science test results will be released in the fall, after the first year of instruction following newly revised academic standards.
In St. Paul Public Schools, students’ overall scores for the past school year improved slightly from those of the previous year. About 26.6% of students scored proficient in math and 34.8% were proficient in reading. Last year, about 26% scored proficient in math while 34.1% were proficient in reading.
What are the MCAs?
The MCAs are standards-based assessments. That means they evaluate what students have learned by the end of a grade. But they are one data point that should be considered along with other measures of student learning, according to state education officials. The Minnesota Test of Academic Skills is an alternate assessment given to students with cognitive disabilities.
Students take the reading and math MCA tests in third through eighth grades and once in high school. Science testing is done in fifth and eighth grades and once in high school.
The results are used as a “system check” at the school, district or student group level.
The MCAs gather information about how state academic standards are being taught. Schools can then use the information to improve curriculum and student support. They can also be used by teachers to see where students did well so they can reinforce the ways they teach those skills.
What can parents learn from the MCAs?
MCA scores help officials know if their school is making progress and help the state identify which schools need support, said Michael Rodriguez, dean of the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development. Rodriguez is a psychometrician, meaning he looks at the technical side of test development and scoring.
But, while MCA scores provide progress information to schools, Rodriguez said he doesn’t think individual scores should be the information parents receive when it comes to how their student is doing. Instead, Rodriguez said, student performance levels — Does Not Meet, Meets, Partially Meets, or Exceeds standards — are much more informative.
“The MCAs are really about how the schools are doing,” Rodriguez said. “And it’s really important for us if we’re going to continue to improve and support our schools and identify the schools that need those comprehensive supports.”
On an individual student level, MCAs are not designed to provide the same detailed information about student learning that classroom assessments and other evidence of learning provide, state officials said.
“Parents use the results to help identify where a student is doing well and where they might need more support,” according to the state Education Department. “The performance level (Does Not Meet, Meets, Partially Meets, or Exceeds) can indicate progress in a subject over time, but MCA/MTAS scores cannot be compared across years. Since there is no single assessment that can provide the full perspective of what a student has learned, parents should use additional measures for a more complete picture.”
What’s happening to improve student achievement?
There are several initiatives in Minnesota designed to boost achievement. They include the READ Act, signed into law in 2023, and teacher recruitment and retention programs.
The READ Act aims to have all children reading at or above grade level every year and to support multilingual learners and students receiving special-education services in their individualized reading goals.
In St. Paul Public Schools, there are more than 50 teachers involved in reading intervention across the district. They are sent to specific schools based on identified need, according to Andrew Collins, SPPS executive chief of schools.
“It’s based upon data. What does need look like, and how are we supporting need?” Collins said. “And then how are we also providing some other tailored opportunities for some of our administrators that might be in buildings in which their data looks a little bit different as compared to their colleagues? So it’s supporting everyone and also trying to differentiate support.”
At Jie Ming Mandarin Immersion Academy, which had some of the highest MCA proficiency rates in the district this year, Principal Bobbie Johnson said data is an important part of her school’s success from teachers’ first day.
“I give them the data, not just MCA, also ELL ACCESS data, school climate data,” Johnson said. “We look through the data. We decide as a whole group, what’s moving forward this year, what’s our focus? So I think data-driven, very passionate, very skillful staff (are key). And then the students, the family.”
Opt-outs
Because students are not required to take the MCAs, some families choose to opt out.
At St. Paul Public Schools, 90% of eligible students tested in math and 92% tested in reading. On an individual school level, opt-out rates can be significantly higher and tend to go up as students get older. At SPPS schools, 2024-2025 opt-out rates ranged anywhere from 0% to 40.1% or 100%.
At EdAllies, a nonprofit advocate for historically underserved students, officials tend to focus on fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math student achievement as benchmarks.
“High school is a tough data set to look at, just because there’s just so many opt-outs that even one student not meeting proficiency can skew the data,” said Josh Crosson, executive director of EdAllies.
As an example, Crosson points out a school with a high proficiency rate for a group of students, but less than 50 students in that group.
The more students who participate in the MCAs, the more information districts and schools have to make decisions about how to use money, staff and resources, according to the Education Department.
It’s always the parent’s right to decide to opt out, Rodriguez said, but he said he encourages parents to motivate their kids to do their best on the test “because that’s how we learn about how our schools are doing.”
“When you factor in some of the opt-out rates, it makes comparisons even more difficult because I think people want to compare School A to School B,” Collins said. “And there’s so much more data and so many more layers of data that you really need to understand and look at to get an accurate comparison.”
Looking at the data
MCA results are looked at in different ways – from grade and performance level to student groups like race and age or whether they’re receiving special-education services or are learning English.
“You can look at the average, but the average doesn’t really tell you much about the variation in lots of schools,” Rodriguez said. “There are kids that get the highest scores, but there may be lots of kids that get low scores, and perhaps because they’re learning English, or they’re new to the state, or they move every year. … They are not simply a direct result of what the school is doing. It is all the prior experiences, the prior opportunities and the resources available.”
Schools with lower MCA scores tend to be the most segregated, with the least amount of resources and least-experienced teachers, Rodriguez said. Schools with the highest proportion of English learners also tend to have lower scores, he said.
“But you know what? Those English learners, their reading scores grow faster than anybody else. But of course, they have a lot to grow. So as they’re learning English, their performance is increasing faster than anybody,” Rodriguez said.
It’s not really useful to compare schools based on test scores to decide which one is best because every school has a different composition of students, which can create different challenges, he said.
According to Rodriguez’s research on student achievement, 80% of differences in student performance happens within schools rather than between them. For that reason, breaking down data within a school can help give a better idea of how students are doing, rather than looking at aggregate data, Crosson said.
What can parents do?
Rodriguez said parents should ask their students how their experience was with the test. It’s important for parents to talk with their children about how they’re experiencing school. He asks his own child if he learned anything while taking the exam, what he thought of it and what he thought was interesting or difficult.
Parents’ relationships with teachers can be vital, according to education officials. Having conversations with them also can be an opportunity for parents to ask teachers what other resources and opportunities their child could be receiving, Crosson said.
“So often, kids of color and kids with disabilities who do well on the MCAs aren’t also offered opportunities to advance or excel in high school and then access college-level materials,” Crosson said. “So I think it should pique interest and a lot of questions around parents of both, ‘Why is my child not doing as well as they could be based on the state standards?’ or ‘Can my child have more opportunity?’”
Parents should also consider other aspects of their student’s school experience, such as specialties, opportunities and community, Rodriguez said.
“Test scores are part of the picture, but kind of a small part,” Rodriguez said.
To look up a school and see details on its assessments, staffing and students, attendance rates and more, visit the Minnesota Report Card at rc.education.mn.gov/#mySchool/p–3.
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