By Erica Metzler, Chalkbeat Colorado
More than half of Colorado students in grades three through eight didn’t meet grade-level expectations in reading, writing, or math on state tests they took this past spring, and glaring disparities based on income and race remain essentially unchanged.
The 2019 Colorado test results released Thursday paint a student performance picture that is substantially similar to past years. In literacy, 45.8% of students met or exceeded expectations on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, a modified version of the PARCC test given to students in third through eighth grade. That’s 1.3 percentage points higher than last year. In math, 34.7% of students did so, roughly the same percentage as last year.
However, state education officials see a few promising trend lines in the 2019 Colorado test results, including in the state’s literacy scores, which have edged up every year since this more rigorous CMAS test was first administered in 2015.