Colorado students in many grades made promising gains in math, English language arts and science on state standardized tests last spring, according to results released Tuesday morning by the Colorado Department of Education.
The outcomes mark a forward step in students’ academy recovery coming out of the pandemic after many kids suffered learning setbacks while bouncing between remote and in-person learning.
Still, 2024 results from the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, PSAT and SAT exams show there is more progress to be made. High schoolers, for instance, hit notable deficits with math scores on the PSAT and SAT while fourth grade students experienced the biggest decline of any grade on the CMAS English language arts test. Echoing test results from previous years, students of color, children with disabilities, kids from low-income families and students learning English continue to significantly trail their peers.
Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova painted an optimistic picture of student progress during a media conference Tuesday morning while also doubling down on the need to address chronic achievement gaps.
Figuring out how to close those gaps is among the most pressing and daunting challenges hanging over educators, Córdova said.
“That probably is the question that weighs most heavily on both the minds and hearts of educators in Colorado,” she said. “I think we all come into this profession with a real focus on ensuring that students who are some of the most vulnerable kids in our systems have the kinds of supports that they need to be successful in school.”
The state conducts standardized tests each spring to measure both student proficiency — whether students are meeting state standards in subject areas — and student growth, which gauges how much progress students demonstrate from one school year to another compared to their classmates.
While kids in grades three through eight take CMAS exams in math and English language arts, students in fifth, eighth and 11th grades take CMAS tests in science.
Data released Tuesday reflects statewide test results broken down by individual grades and subjects and by specific groups of students. School- and district-level test results will be made public Aug. 29.
Some grades’ test results surpassed pre-pandemic scores, the state education department noted. Student growth has also largely taken a turn for the better, reaching growth levels recorded before the pandemic. But that growth must be “sustained to rebound fully,” according to CDE officials.
About 500,000 students took state exams in April. Participation rates among some sets of students on CMAS exams in the spring were similar to participation rates in 2023. Other groups of students participated at slightly lower rates, according to CDE data.
Participation rates still lag behind participation in 2019 before the pandemic, CDE noted.
In a select set of grades and subjects, participation was so low in the spring that state education officials caution drawing conclusions from the test data. About half of 11th graders took the science CMAS exams in the spring, for instance.
“Interpreting our 11th grade data is difficult, and we encourage caution when doing so,” said Joyce Zurkowski, chief assessment officer for the state education department.
“Extremely large” gaps between different student demographics
Overall test results revealed that more students met expectations on CMAS assessments this year than in 2023. However, for most of the tests, the percentage of kids who met or exceeded expectations remained lower than scores from 2019, Córdova said.
On some exams, test-takers in 2024 outperformed students in 2019, including on CMAS English language arts exams, in which a higher percentage of students in both third and sixth grades met or surpassed expectations this year than right before the pandemic.
Among some other highlights of test outcomes, in third, sixth, seventh and eighth grades, a slightly higher percentage of kids met or exceeded expectations in English language arts compared with results from 2023.
Every grade except eighth showed a higher percentage of students meeting or surpassing expectations on CMAS math exams compared with 2023. And student growth in math reflected “sustained improvement” within all grades compared with pre-pandemic figures.
However, stubborn achievement gaps that continue to put students with additional challenges behind in school tempered the bright outcomes. Zurkowski described some of the gaps as “extremely large.”
When comparing the percentage of white students who met or exceeded expectations on standardized tests with the percentage of Black and Hispanic students who met or exceeded expectations on exams, gaps ranged from about 26 percentage points to 33 percentage points.
When comparing the percentage of more affluent students who met or exceeded expectations on assessments with the percentage of low-income students who met or exceeded the same expectations — using kids who qualify for free and reduced lunch as an indicator — gaps were between 31 and 33.5 percentage points.
And when comparing the percentage of students without disabilities who met or exceeded expectations on exams with the percentage of students with disabilities who met or exceeded expectations, gaps in performance varied from 33 to about 41 percentage points.
Once the state released school- and district-level data later this month, Córdova said, “we’ll have more opportunity to find some of the positive outliers that we can learn from.”
The state education department also pulls together groups of districts into what it calls “learning cohorts” that dive more deeply into serving different groups of students. One cluster of districts works together to better understand how to serve students with learning disabilities. Another band of districts who first came together last year are exchanging ideas on ways to help migrant students.
“We definitely want to make sure that we’re providing the kinds of supports that bring people together to both show challenges but also some of the successful strategies at addressing some of the barriers that are getting in the way of kids being able to learn,” Córdova said.
Additionally, test results gave insight into how high schoolers performed on the PSAT and SAT, with scores pointing to a mix of improvements and stumbles among students. The percentage of ninth and 10th graders at or above the college readiness benchmark jumped in reading and writing on the PSAT compared with results from last year. Eleventh grade results showed students dropping by 1.3 percentage points in reading and writing on the SAT.
Students also struggled more with math on the PSAT and SAT, with scores dipping among ninth, 10th and 11th graders from 2023.
Those shortfalls in student performance might be driven, in part, by changes to PSAT and SAT testing in the spring, when the test shifted from being administered on paper to being fully online and when those exams introduced different content from previous years.
“All of those, I would suggest, are indeed having impact on our scores as well as true changes in student performance,” Zurkowski said. “At this point, we can’t disentangle those two factors. As we move forward, I expect that next year when we look at our results for both reading and writing and for math, when we see changes we’ll be able to attribute those changes to true changes in student achievement as opposed to this test that really looks at things differently and assesses skills differently than what we had in the past.”
State education leaders plan to continue assessing academic recovery among students following the height of the pandemic while also focusing on pushing students to meet bolder goals.
“We know that prior to the pandemic we still weren’t at the place where we would want to be,” Córdova said, “and it is incredibly important that we are both looking at how are we making progress from frankly some of the lowest points that we’ve had in our state history since we’ve had achievement tests as well as setting significantly more aspirational goals and talking about the kinds of supports that it’s going to require for all teachers, for all schools, for all school leaders to be able to help their students meet those ambitious goals.”