2024 MCAS scores show stalled progress toward pandemic recovery

Massachusetts public school students have not regained their pre-pandemic performance levels on state standardized tests, particularly on the English portion of the exam, based on 2024 test results released by the state Tuesday.

During a Monday afternoon press briefing, Massachusetts Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler acknowledged that the 2024 results on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS, did not show as much improvement as officials had hoped.

“We know there is much work to be done,” he said. But he added there is other progress to celebrate. “Kids are back in school. Not back to the levels of pre-pandemic, but certainly trending notably in the right direction.”

In English Language Arts, students actually slipped from last year, particularly in younger grades. Roughly 39% of test takers in Grades 3 to 8 earned at or above a passing score in 2024, compared to 42% of students in 2023 and 52% of students in 2019. Among tenth graders, 57% of test takers earned a passing score or above in English, compared to 58% in 2023 and 61% in 2019.

Performance on the math section held steady for the most part from last year. Forty-one percent of students in Grades 3 to 8 earned at least a passing score, which is roughly equal to last year’s figure, but still down from 49% of students passing in 2019. Forty-eight percent of tenth-graders earned at least a passing score in the math section, which is down two percentage points from last year and 11 percentage points from 2019.

The MCAS exams in English and math are required of students in grades 3 to 8 and grade 10. Students in grades 5, 8 and 10 also take exams in science. There were gains in proficiency among fifth and tenth graders on the science exams from last year, but scores still fell short from before the pandemic.

The state’s overall chronic absenteeism rate — which reflects how many students missed more than 18 days of the school year — dropped to 19.5% in March 2024 from 22% overall in the 2022-23 school year. State officials said while that rate is still higher than pre-pandemic levels of around 13%, it has seen consistent improvement over the last three years.

Rob Curtin, the associate commissioner of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, added that students who were not considered chronically absent performed better on the MCAS. Only about 22% of third to eighth graders who were chronically absent last year met or exceeded expectation on the test, compared to a 44% passing rate among students who attended school more regularly.

“The power of being in school is definitely clear in the achievement results in the 2024 MCAS results,” he said.

Additionally, 3% of the state’s roughly 1,800 public schools were cited as making “limited or no progress” in 2024, down from 6% in 2023.

Districts identified by the state as making “moderate progress towards targets” included Boston Public Schools and Worcester Public Schools, the state’s largest and second-largest districts, respectively. State officials labeled Springfield Public Schools as making “substantial progress toward targets.”

Across the state, 21 Massachusetts districts were cited for losing ground on MCAS performance and were flagged to receive some level of state assistance and intervention, including Chelsea Public Schools, as well as several central and western Massachusetts districts including Holyoke, Northampton and the Mohawk Trail Regional School district.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.