Maryland student test scores yield mixed post-pandemic results

(The Center Square) — The Maryland State Department of Education has shared statewide test results on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program for the 2022-23 school year, revealing encouraging improvements in literacy, some math and limited science progress.

While only 47% of students in grades 3-8 tested proficient in English Language Arts, the department is celebrating last year’s gains. Student’s scores on the 2022-23 MCAP were the best they’ve had since the 2014-15 school year and the biggest single-year improvement in the same amount of time. Literacy was where students made the strongest showing; the department highlighted that literacy scores surpassed pre-pandemic levels in its press release.

Test scores from the English 10 assessment improved more than those for grades 3-8. While the percentage of students in grades 3-8 scoring proficient in ELA rose 3% from 2018-19 to now, the percentage scoring proficient on the English 10 assessment rose 11%, with 54% of students achieving proficiency. This, too, is students’ best score since 2014-15.

The MSDE attributes this progress to “committing and reaffirming its commitment to early literacy and early literacy interventions” and investments like the Maryland Leads grant initiative, which emphasizes the body of research known as “the science of reading” and structured literacy.

While Maryland has not adopted comprehensive literacy education laws like many other states, similar language and concepts are present in the department’s press release announcing the MCAP scores, and the State Superintendent of Schools elsewhere makes the case that the education department is already hard at work utilizing these practices.

In math, students have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels on the MCAP, but scores appear to be heading in the right direction, a “hopeful trend” that shows that “the targeted math interventions implemented by Maryland’s educational leaders are beginning to take root,” according to the department.

Twenty-five percent of students in grades 3-8 tested proficient in math, up from 22% in 2021-22. Third and fourth graders were most improved, each testing 4% higher than the previous school year. Only 17% of students scored proficient on the Algebra I assessment, a 3% increase from 2021-22.

For both ELA and math, the percentage of students who tested at the lowest performance level decreased from the 2021-22 school year, and 16-22% of students in ELA and 11-17% of students in math were only 1-3 correct answers away from achieving proficiency.

For science, the number of fifth graders that tested proficient rose from 31% in 2021-22 to 35% in 2022-23, but the percentage of eighth graders that scored proficient dropped in that same period, from 35% to 26%, despite Maryland being a”lead partner in the implementation of Next Generation Science Standards” and “one of five states that have passed federal peer review on their science assessment implementation,” according to the release.