‘Nation‘s Report Card‘ suggests Minnesota student performance has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels

NINA MOINI: Our top story this afternoon. It's been nearly five years since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted learning for children. We all remember. New data shows, as the nation's report card shows that across the nation, fourth and eighth graders in 2024, so last year, still performed below pre-pandemic levels.

And that's the same for Minnesota. Across the state, student test scores did not significantly change from two years ago. The last time the test was conducted in 2022, students around the country showed steep learning losses from the pandemic. Many experts had hoped to see students rebounding from some of those losses in 2024.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which provides data for the nation's report card, is mandated by Congress and is the largest nationally representative test of student learning. The assessments in math and reading are given every two years to a broad sample of students, again, in fourth and eighth grade. Joining us to talk about these results and what they might mean for Minnesota students is Julio Caesar, the Executive Director of Research and Evaluation and Assessment for Bloomington Public Schools.

I mean, when these results came out this year, as an educator and from your perspective, were you like, oh, here we go. What is this going to show? Were you surprised to see not really a significant change from two years ago?

JULIO CAESAR: At this point, we are not surprised, actually, especially after we saw our MCA scores come out at the beginning of the year. What we're seeing is that our students are still in recovery mode from the onset of the pandemic.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Tell me more about these tests, because I said in the introduction here that this is the largest nationally representative test of student learning. But with standardized tests, I know that there are a lot of different feelings around it. Do you teach to this test at all, or what do you try to glean from findings like this?

JULIO CAESAR: Yeah, no, we definitely do not teach to the test, specifically the NAEP. The NAEP, as we know, has been around for a really long time, I believe pretty much from the early '70s. And what this test does, which is quite impressive, and the work that goes behind it is that it is a national representative test.

And what we think about that is it's comprehensive and as well as unbiased. There's a lot of work that goes behind the test creation that ensures that when we're looking at these metrics or these results that we are able to compare them not just across the nation, but within Minnesota and across groups. And can you repeat the last part of your question?

NINA MOINI: Oh no, I just was going to say you don't teach to it, but what do you try to take away from it or glean from the results to apply to your teaching?

JULIO CAESAR: Yeah, so the one thing that we kind of think about NAEP, and it's very similar to the MCAs, is that it is a measure of what our students know and can do in the classrooms as well as various subjects. So when we look at these results, again, as an academic and as well as someone who is versed in psychometrics, we know that these numbers are pretty solid.

I think at this point, and kind of what you mentioned before, is that the public, and I would say a good number of the public out there, don't quite trust these standardized tests. Again, there's a lot of misinformation out there regarding what is being measured. Is it fair? We hear a lot about a bias. But again, a lot of the work goes behind the test to ensure that those things are minimized as much as we can. You can never get rid of the bias in a test. But our goal is to minimize it as well as balance it out.

So when we see these scores, and again, especially here in Minnesota, what we saw is that the score changes specifically for math and reading are a little bit disappointing. Disappointing in the sense of the fact that we have been doing massive amount of work to ensure that our students are caught up from the onset of the pandemic. But we're still behind, right?

Like in mathematics in grade four, if we look at the change from 2019 to 2024, we're still eight points behind. In reading in Minnesota, we're about still eight points behind. For grade eight math, we are nine points behind from 2019. And from grade eight reading, we're still four points behind.

However, one thing that we really need to take note about this is that ranking wise in 2019 for grade four math, we were number one in the nation. And we have only shifted to number six. For grade four, we were ranked 12th. And here's where we see a huge change. We are now ranking 27th in the nation.

From grade eight, again, we were in the top three. We were number three. We're still number three. And then for grade eight reading, we were ranked 17th and we moved up to the 12th place. Again, just seeing that other states are not doing as well as us.

So although we don't see the significant changes that we would like to see, we are seeing that ranking wise, we are doing much better than other states, specifically in grade four.

NINA MOINI: We did see in the report card significant disparities between white students and students of color, which is not new in Minnesota's case. Although we tend to do better than other states, we still have really significant ways to go, as you alluded to. How are you addressing these gaps in your district?

JULIO CAESAR: Oh, that's a great question. So there's a lot of things that our staff are doing specifically around attendance. What we have seen since the onset of the pandemic is that our students of color were the hardest hit among attendance. And as we know, they were the ones hardest hit with a lot of significant impacts in other variables, such as mental health.

So we here at Bloomington have done an intensive, I would probably say, program to improve student attendance. So what we saw a shift between '22 and '23 of about three points, three percentage points. And it may not seem that significant, but that means that we reduce chronic absenteeism for more than 250 students, and a large proportion of them were students of color.

NINA MOINI: What do you think people are still catching up on? You mentioned attendance. What is it going to take, do you think, to get back to pre-pandemic levels? Do you think we're never going to get back there, or do you think it's just going to take time?

JULIO CAESAR: I do think it's going to take time. So attendance is one issue, especially for our students of color, especially for our American Indian students. Less than half a percentage of them are attending school at least 90% of the time. If we look at Minnesota, and this is a little bit of an outdated data because the state hasn't provided us the 2024 attendance there yet, we have a quarter of our students not attending 90% of the time. That's a significant impact. If you are not in school, how are you going to learn the material?

NINA MOINI: Anything on the end of teachers or the district or parents that you would give advice to people on how we should be moving forward in a way that you can take into account test scores like this, but also apply what needs to be applied in the classroom and at home? What would you say to all of the stakeholders here in reaction to these results and moving forward?

JULIO CAESAR: I think there needs to be an emphasis of having more community and family engagement. And I don't mean it on the part of the families, but I do mean it on the part of every stakeholder that is available. We need to have significant changes in that area, as in, we have to have our leaders in our schools going out to the community, going out and speaking to parents, going out and speaking to community members.

That's actually something that our superintendent has started this year and going out to coffee shops. I think since the beginning of the year, he's been out to five different coffee shops. He sits there, he comes in with his placards, says he's a superintendent of Bloomington public schools, and he's just open to that communication. And I think we need a lot more than that, because we need to engage families. Families who are engaged, and this goes back to research, shows that families who are engaged, their students do much better in school. And not just in academics, but as well in social and emotional learning variables.

NINA MOINI: OK. So it's layered and it's nuanced, and we'll continue following this. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us, Julio.

JULIO CAESAR: Thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: That was Julio Caesar, the Executive Director of Research, Evaluation, and Assessment for Bloomington Public Schools.