Maine students’ math and reading skills have worsened in recent years, in keeping with a concerning national decline in student preparedness exacerbated by the pandemic, a new report found.
In 2022, only 24 percent of Maine eighth graders were proficient in math and just 29 percent of fourth graders were proficient in reading, according to the 2024 Kids Count Data Book, an annual report on children’s wellbeing published by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation in collaboration with the Maine Children’s Alliance.
Those levels are worse than national averages, although not by much, the report found. The country’s worsening educational outcomes shouldn’t be blamed entirely on the pandemic, which caused unprecedented interruptions in learning as students navigated remote and hybrid schools, the report argued. For decades, American students haven’t kept up with peer nations in the academic skills “needed for many of today’s fastest-growing occupations in a highly competitive global economy,” the authors wrote.
In Maine, pre-pandemic math and reading proficiency had already been considered low: in 2019, only 34 percent of Maine eighth graders were proficient in math and only 36 percent fourth graders were proficient in reading, according to the report, the 35th edition of which was published Monday.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education, however, downplayed the findings, noting that they are based on scores from a national assessment that is only administered to a small percentage of randomly selected Maine students. The federal National Assessment of Education Progress is sometimes referred to as “the Nation’s Report Card.”
The test “is used to identify national trends and has proven not to be a valid or reliable measure of individual states’ performance,” said Marcus Mrowka, communications director for the Department of Education.
“Instead of teaching kids to be good standardized test takers, Maine has chosen to focus on assessments and measures of learning that support the skills and knowledge that educators, parents and communities want for Maine learners,” he said.
Teachers measure their students’ performance in a variety of ways, including a statewide assessment that tracks proficiency in math and reading, Mrowka said. In 2022, nearly 84 percent of Maine students scored “at or above expectations in English language arts,” and just more than 81 percent achieved a similar score in math, he said. He could not provide comparable data from 2019 because the state began using a new assessment during that period.
Rita Furlow, a senior policy analyst with the Maine Children’s Alliance, said she wasn’t surprised by the state’s reaction to the Kids Count findings given comments they have made about the national assessment in the past.
“The NAEP won’t tell you how individual children are doing in Maine. It is viewed, however, as the foremost measure of whether America’s children are learning and where there are learning gaps,” she said. “It is a tool that Maine policy makers can utilize to examine how Maine children are doing. It isn’t the only tool we should use — but we shouldn’t ignore the results.”
Maine has taken important steps to support students, but the state’s math and reading proficiency level have been longtime concerns, she said, in part, it seems, because not all schools follow evidence-based approaches to literacy. For instance, she cited a report published in March by the Maine Education Policy Research Institute at the University of Maine that surveyed 58 Maine schools and found that only nine used reading programs aligned with high quality standards.
Furlow called the state’s recent announcement of $10 million of grant funding to develop evidenced-based literacy instruction “a big step in the right direction,” though improving students’ scores will require a yearslong commitment to ensuring teachers can access support such as additional training or teaching methods. Lawmakers also passed a bill last year that created $200,000 for literacy programming.
While the report identified Maine’s education outcomes as a cause for concern, other markers of child wellbeing improved, especially around their economic security. The percentage of children living in poverty fell from 14 to 12 percent between 2019 and 2022, for example, putting Maine ahead of the national average.
The report provided a handful of recommendations to improve student learning, some of which Maine has already adopted. They also include:
— providing kids with reliable internet access and places to study with friends, teachers and counselors;
— expanding access to tutoring for struggling students;
— taking advantage of what pandemic relief funds still exist to support programs that promote academic, social, physical and emotional wellbeing;
— tracking and combating chronic absenteeism, the rates of which have remained high since the outset of the pandemic;
— investing in community schools, public schools that provide “wrap-around” services and creative support programs for students in the local communities where they live.
The state supports those recommendations and has taken steps in keeping with them, such as using federal funds to boost literacy, implementing universal free meals, expanding community schools and trying to increase school attendance through a variety of engagement initiatives, Mrowka said. “We hope that future reports will highlight what Maine educators and schools are doing in a way that connects with the sensible recommendations they lay out.”
