REGIONAL- The Minnesota Department of Education’s recently released 2024 report cards for academic achievement in the state’s school districts showed that less than half of Minnesota’s students performed at grade-level proficiencies in math, reading, and science on the state assessment tests.
Still, an encouraging sign from the data is that for reading and math, scores remained steady from last year at 49.9 percent for reading and 45.5 percent for math, and science scores improved from 39.2 to 39.6 percent, suggesting that schools are beginning to see some success in countering the large drop in overall scores experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need all students to succeed and thrive in school,” Education Commissioner Willie Jett said in a press release. “Statewide assessment and accountability data are an important part of a broader set of measures that tell our schools and families how students are doing and guide MDE in planning how to best support our school communities.”
Education officials noted that lawmakers significantly increased K-12 spending over the past year or so and passed the READ Act to mandate phonics-based reading instruction in the early grades as measures which should return dividends in student performance in upcoming years.
“It’s going to be a long-term systemic change and we’re starting to implement it now,” Jett said.
Scores are affected by student participation, as families can choose to opt out of Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests, with research showing that participation in high school is typically lower, and that white students and those with higher grade point averages were more likely to decline to participate.
There is also a view held by many educators that the tests don’t truly measure student performance as observed in their broader day-to-day assessment activities with students.
“Teachers and administrators do not see the test as something that is really reflective of what is happening at the schools, and that has had major repercussions because we, at the state level, we use this as an accountability system,” said Julio Cesar, executive director of research and assessment for the Bloomington Public School District. “But if teachers and administrators do not buy into the test (and) students are not buying into the test, what are we really measuring?”
Locally, the Ely and St. Louis County School districts have faced their own challenges with the pandemic drop, and the Ely district appears to have fared the best relative to state assessment scores, while St. Louis County Schools for the most part have performed below state averages in all three assessment subjects.

ISD 696
Scores for the Ely district as a whole exceeded the state averages in all three academic assessments.
In math, 45.6 percent of Ely students performed at or above grade-level proficiency, edging just above the state average of 45.5 percent. Washington Elementary had the highest percentage of proficient math students at 55.9 percent. Memorial Middle School scored 40.5 percent, and Memorial High School was well below the state math average at 34.3 percent.
Ely has performed consistently well against the state reading average the past four years, with 2024’s mark of 51.7 coming in above the state average of 49.9. That reading figure was bolstered by Memorial High School students, where 57.1 percent of students performed at or above grade level, while 52 percent of middle schoolers did so. Reading scores among elementary students dropped to 49.5 percent, down from 56.8 percent in 2023.
Science assessments are administered in only grades five and eight, and once in high school, creating greater variability in year-to-year scores, particularly at the building level. Science proficiency averaged 42.9 percent for the district, or 3.3 percent higher than the state average. But the challenge of variability can be seen when looking across the past four years of scores for Memorial High School, which were 78 percent in 2021, 51.5 percent in 2022, 40 percent in 2023, and 51.7 percent in 2024. Middle school proficiency was only 19.1 percent in 2021 for the one grade measured, while it was up to 32.5 percent this year. Elementary scores have declined since hitting 61.9 percent in 2021, slipping to 47.2 percent in 2024.

ISD 2142
The state report card does not break out middle school averages separately for St. Louis County Schools, reporting only on elementary and secondary schools.
For the district as a whole, including all grade levels at all five attendance centers, ISD 2142 fell below state averages in all three measured academic areas.
The greatest discrepancy was in math, where only 29.1 percent of students demonstrated proficiency, well below the state average of 45.5 percent. In 2021, the district tested at 33.7 percent proficiency and has declined in each subsequent year.
The gap is much narrower in reading, with ISD 2142 registering a 45 percent proficiency score for 2024 versus the statewide average of 49.9 percent. The district’s score is slightly lower than scores for the previous three years.
In the more highly variable science proficiency measure, ISD 2142 was again below the state average, 32.3 percent proficient versus the average of 39.6 percent.
The district’s elementary schools were the strongest contributors to the overall district scoring in 2024, with Tower-Soudan Elementary besting the state math average at 46.9 percent proficient, and North Woods and Cherry elementary schools topping the reading average at 53.7 percent and 56.8 percent proficient respectively. North Woods and Cherry were joined by South Ridge Elementary in eclipsing the state average in science. North Woods had 54.4 percent of students performing at grade-level proficiency, while Cherry was at 44.7 percent and South Ridge at 40.5 percent.
The four secondary schools of St. Louis County Schools – North Woods, Northeast Range, Cherry and South Ridge – have consistently performed below state averages for the past four years, Northeast Range being the lone exception, as it narrowly beat the limited science assessment state average in 2023, with 42.9 percent proficient compared to the statewide average of 39.2 percent. All four schools also performed below the district averages in math, reading, and science for 2024.
Only one in five North Woods secondary students was proficient in math, 20.4 percent. That figure was lower still for Northeast Range at 13.3 percent.
In reading, North Woods was within five points of the state average at 44.7 percent and just barely below the district average of 45 percent, while Northeast Range slotted in at 30.4 percent proficient.
At North Woods, 28.6 percent of students demonstrated proficiency in science, compared to 21.2 percent at Northeast Range.
After three straight years of topping the statewide average, students at North Woods Elementary slipped to 37.6 percent proficiency in math. The school was still well above the district math average of 29.1 percent. For the fourth consecutive year, North Woods Elementary students exceeded the state average in reading, coming in at 53.7 percent. The school has excelled in science compared to the state average the past four years, scoring 54.5 percent proficient in 2024, almost 16 points higher than the state average.
Tower-Soudan has scored above the state average in math for three of the past four years, including 2024 when it came in at 46.9 percent. After notching a state-average-beating 52.9 percent in reading in 2022, Tower-Soudan slipped to 46.9 percent in 2024, three points below the state average. The state report card indicates that counts were too small to report for science assessments in 2021, 2023 and 2024, but in 2022 the school recorded a mark of 58.8 percent, well above that year’s state average of 41.3 percent.
The 2024 score for math at Babbitt Elementary came in at 37.7 percent proficient, well below the state average but well above the district average. The score was a significant improvement over the 28.1 percent registered in 2023. At 44.1 percent, Babbitt Elementary’s reading score was just slightly below the district average of 45 percent. The school’s performance in science reflects the highly variable nature of that limited assessment, as only 9.1 percent of students performed at a proficient level in 2024, while the group assessed in 2022 came in at 46.7 percent proficient.
It should be noted that a number of different factors can affect a school’s performance on assessment tests, including the school’s size and grade levels assessed, student physical, nutritional, and mental health, socioeconomic composition of the student body, testing conditions, and student opt-outs.

MPR News contributed to this report