More than five years after the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools for months, Massachusetts students continue to lag far behind pre-pandemic levels on state tests, according to the latest MCAS results released Monday. Those lower scores are especially pronounced among high school students, whose scores declined from last year, and in lower-income communities.
Experts say it’s more than just the interruption in education: Students are missing much more school than they used to, and standardized testing is less of a priority in Massachusetts since the MCAS is no longer a graduation requirement.
In other words: the troubling declines in test scores are not going to go away so easily.
“We need to resist the natural temptation to assume that schools have somehow dropped the ball,” said Jack Schnieder, director of the Center for Education Policy at UMass Amherst. “The impact of the pandemic is there, and it is not simply going to go away because we have returned to education as normal.”
Overall, 42% of students met testing expectations, compared to roughly half of all students in 2019, the last pre-pandemic testing year [correct?]. Roughly 18% failed the test; before the pandemic, only 11% did.
Tom Kane, director of Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research, pointed out other factors beyond the interruption in education.
“Student absenteeism jumped during the pandemic,” Kane said. “We still have 50% more students chronically absent than before the pandemic, so we’re not going to reverse it without lowering the absence rate.”
Kane also said the state has put less emphasis on test accountability.
“Massachusetts, even before the No Child Left Behind Act, was a leader in holding schools accountable for student performance,” Kane said. “We’ve sort of taken our foot off the pedal since 2015.”
In English language arts, 42% of students in grades 3 through 8 exceeded the state’s expectations, making modest progress but still below results from 2019. More than half of 10th graders passed the exam’s English portion but still represent a 6% decline from 2024.
Math scores remained stable with 41% of students in grades 3 through 8 meeting or exceeding expectations, the same as 2024. Among 10th graders, 45% met or exceeded expectations, a 3% decline from last year but 14% below 2019 scores.
Last year’s 10th graders were also the first in 20 years to take the MCAS without high stakes after state voters opted to abolish the exam as a high school graduation requirement last fall.
Schnieder encouraged a closer look at this year’s results to see if some students were now slacking off because the test no longer has meaningful consequences.
“Many students may have simply mischievously filled out or not filled out bubbles at all on their tests,” Schnieder said. “If students are, to any degree, engaging in a kind of silent protest, we should take that really seriously and begin thinking about the kinds of assessments that students would be willing or even excited to take because it would actually be a valuable learning experience for them.”
Kane also emphasized that achievement gaps have only widened since the pandemic, specifically, between higher- and lower-income districts.
“Districts like Lynn, Lawrence, Revere, Everett, Fall River and Framingham have seen substantial declines from where they were scoring in 2019,” Kane said. “That has not happened everywhere around the country — for instance, in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a fairly low-income district, is close to or back to 2019 levels of achievement.”
The same isn’t necessarily true in Massachusetts, where many low-income cities and towns are still seeing lower test scores.
