Democratic and Republican lawmakers told Maine Department of Education officials Wednesday they are unsure of what to tell parents who have asked them about the latest national assessment showing lower test scores for students.
Leaders from Gov. Janet Mills’ education department emphasized the National Assessment of Educational Progress results released last month do not fully capture how Maine students are progressing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and that it will take time for different initiatives and investments to lead to more improvements.
Yet members of both parties on the Legislature’s education committee shared concerns Wednesday over how Maine students had the lowest test scores in three decades in both reading and math, per the national assessment administered in 2024 to about 1,900 fourth graders and about 1,700 eighth graders in Maine. Before the pandemic began in 2020, the state’s students consistently tested above the national average in each category.
“I’m trying to field the calls of people who are like, ‘Hey, we used to be really at the top, and it feels like we’re not,’” Senate Majority Leader Teresa Pierce, D-Falmouth, said.
The meeting featured long-running debates that have turned partisan at times over Maine’s shift from focusing on test scores to holistic views on schooling and supporting career education. It was also a reminder of how Maine’s local school districts control plenty of curriculum decisions.
In three of four NAEP categories, Maine students had the lowest average scores since 1992, when national results first came out. In 2022, Maine was the only state to see its record lows in all four testing categories. Last year, those declines either held steady or got worse, making Maine one of 14 states where students are performing significantly below the national average.
A third of Maine’s fourth graders were proficient in math, and 26 percent of both fourth graders and eighth graders were reading at grade level, with each of those results below national averages. The eighth grade math category from the latest NAEP was the only one where Maine’s students — about a quarter — slightly outperformed the national average.
“I don’t know the best way to communicate this so that people don’t get confusing messaging,” Rep. Sheila Lyman, R-Livermore Falls, who is a retired elementary school teacher, told various education officials at Wednesday’s hearing.
Jodi Bossio-Smith, the department’s director of assessment, said the media often “seeks out a negative data point” rather than the broader results from the national data. Beth Lambert, the chief teaching and learning officer, said it is “really critical to examine both the limitations of the assessment and the many strengths of Maine’s comprehensive education efforts.”
That was a reference to how NAEP does not offer school-by-school or district-level results and how a separate state-level assessment has revealed better results than NAEP scores, such as that nearly two-thirds of Maine students have been “at or above expectations” in reading.
Maine has also “embraced a shift away from rote memorization” for reading and math tests to deeper learning skills, Lambert, a former English and performing arts teacher, said. She noted the national assessment may not pick up on how Maine is also focusing on workforce development by supporting students interested in trades and apprenticeships.
“It says to me we don’t have to throw everything out because of this test score,” Lambert said.
Lambert also said Maine has shifted to “Science of Reading” strategies that emphasize phonics over the “balanced literacy” model that various states have scrutinized due to it asking students to rely on contextual clues to identify words and their meanings. But a 2024 report from the Maine Education Policy Research Institute found elementary schools were most commonly using two “balanced literacy” programs in recent years.
Rep. Holly Sargent, D-York, pointed that out and said the education department’s answers Wednesday on the NAEP results were “not sufficient.”
“I’m very, very, very unhappy,” Sargent said.
