M-STEP results reveal struggles for Michigan kids who began school in COVID

• New Michigan test results provide first look at scores for students who began school during COVID-19 closures
• Data shows those students are behind in reading and writing
• About 40% of Michigan third graders are proficient in English language arts down from 45% before the pandemic

More Michigan third and fourth graders are behind in reading and writing compared to students in the same grades before the pandemic started and last year, newly released state standardized test results show.

The results, which provide the first look at state proficiency scores for students who entered kindergarten and first grade in the 2020-21 year when most schools were virtual, suggest many of those children have struggled to catch up.

Results released Wednesday from the spring Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as the M-STEP, show more third and fourth graders were not proficient in English language arts and math in 2023-24 compared to the 2018-19 school year. The proficiency rates in English language arts were also lower compared to their peers in the same grades last year.

The students who took the M-STEP for the first time as third-graders began kindergarten in the 2020-21 school year, when some schools — particularly those serving the most at-risk students in the state — were shut down and those students began their K-12 careers behind a screen.

The results set off “really big alarm bells” and don’t reflect the trajectories seen in other states, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, a research center that explores education finance to inform policy.

They also prompted some lawmakers and education leaders to call for the passage of new laws that would require districts to include phonics in literacy instruction.

Key takeaways from the new data:

• For Michigan third graders, 39.6% were proficient in English language arts during the 2023-2024 school year. That’s down from 40.9% the previous year and 45.1% in the last school year before the pandemic.  
• Fifth, seventh and eighth grade English language proficiency rates increased while sixth grade stayed the same. 
• Math proficiency improved in grades 3 through 7 for the second year in a row.

Michigan was among the states that got the most per-student federal COVID relief funding, with districts getting an average of $3,900 per-pupil. The expiration of the funding next month is not good for the long-term outlook for third and fourth graders, said Roza.

“This was our chance to get the scores up,” she said. “If it’s not going up now, we’re really in trouble.”

Data on student achievement results for spring 2024 in other states is still limited. But Michigan was still behind other states in recovery last year, said Roza.

Available results on 2024 literacy exams show that third and fourth graders are making gains in reading and writing, including in Tennessee, Indiana, and Mississippi. In Colorado, third graders made big gains, but proficiency rates had a big drop compared to last year for fourth graders.

The ‘learning-to-read window’

Some national research has shown evidence of younger children who were not enrolled in school during the early days of COVID struggling with remote learning.

“This year’s scores … show that, on average, being educated remotely during the 2020-21 school year rather than in-person during the pandemic affected progress,” said State Superintendent Michael Rice in a statement. 

“Being in the learning-to-read window – in preschool or early elementary grades – when COVID-19 hit also affected assessment results on average.”

Related:

• Michigan school funding bump varies by district. See how much yours will get
• Michigan students fell behind during COVID. Their recovery lags other states

The learning-to-read window refers to the period of time that most kids learn to read between ages 4 and 7.

In addition to difficulty with remote learning, education researchers have suggested several possible explanations for why younger learners were more affected by pandemic learning loss. Fewer kids enrolled in preschool and kindergarten during the early days of COVID because early childhood education was severely disrupted, which may be a contributing factor.

The state and local districts should have used federal relief dollars to remedy those potential causes for learning loss with effective instruction and interventions for early literacy over the following three years of schooling like other states did, said Roza.

Michigan is expanding access to free Pre-K programs for four-year-olds but a bill that would require students to attend kindergarten has not passed. 

Key takeaways from local districts:

• At Detroit Public Schools Community District, third grade reading proficiency was at 11.7% for the 2023-2024 school year, compared to 12.4% the previous year and 11.9% in 2019. Third grade math was at 15.1%, up from 13.9% the prior year but down from 16% pre-pandemic. 
• In Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, 55.4% of third graders were proficient in reading, compared to 58.5% the previous year and 61% in 2019. In third grade math, 56.8% of third graders were proficient, compared to 58.4% the previous year and 62.8% pre-pandemic. 
• At Ann Arbor Public Schools, third grade reading proficiency has hovered around 60 or 61% over the last few years. But pre-pandemic, proficiency was at 67.4%. Math proficiency for third graders was at 62.5%, compared to 70% pre-pandemic. 
• At Grand Rapids Public Schools, 22.2% of third graders are proficient in reading and 19.1% are in math. That’s up from the previous year, but down from pre-pandemic when reading proficiency for third graders was 28.2% and math proficiency was 26.8%. 

Each spring, students in grades 3 through 7 take the M-STEP in English language arts and math. Students in fifth grade also take the M-STEP in science and social studies. The PSAT is given to eighth graders in English language arts and math and the SAT is given to 11th graders in the same subjects.

In the 2019-20 school year, the exams were not given to students due to disruptions from COVID. The tests were optional in the 2020-21 school year. Because of these disruptions, educators and experts often compare new test result data to the 2018-19 school year to measure learning loss.

Literacy woes

The new results suggest Michigan is not improving its literacy problem.

Michigan student literacy rates have long ranked among the lowest in the nation. The state was ranked 43rd in the country for fourth grade reading on the 2022 National Assessment for Educational Progress, a rigorous national exam that tests a representative sample of students in grades 4, 8, and 12.

Currently, schools in the state are not required to follow a set reading curriculum. While the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) provides some guidance on using evidence-based programs, districts and often individual schools may use different curriculum under local control.

According to a 2022 policy brief by the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan State University, reading instruction materials can vary widely within districts and even in classrooms at the same elementary schools. Despite district guidance from the school systems that participated in the study’s survey, many teachers were using poorly rated or unrated curricula, according to the researchers.

Two proposed bills in the Michigan Legislature would require schools to use reading curriculum and interventions for students with trouble learning to read that are backed by the “science of reading,” or early literacy instruction that emphasizes phonics along with building vocabulary and background knowledge. 

The state Senate approved the legislation in March, but it has not yet been taken up by the House. Prior iterations of the bills have stalled or failed. 

Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat from Ann Arbor who has championed the legislation for years, said the M-STEP results could help elevate the importance of the bills.

“It seems to me, there are some rather obvious steps we haven’t taken yet,” he said. “I’m hoping we can move forward with those obvious steps by weaving the science of reading into our curriculum.”

Similar legislation in Tennessee and Mississippi, where literacy rates have improved greatly, were frameworks for Irwin’s proposals, he said.

“They’ve seen success in these methods,” Irwin said. “That’s an additional reason to make sure we’re attending to an early emphasis on phonics.”

Rice, the state superintendent, is urging legislators to approve the bills, which are designed to help kids with characteristics of dyslexia.

State Rep. Matt Koleszar, chair of the House Education Committee, said he supports the bills but he has “to have conversations with other members on the committee on both sides of the aisle to make sure we have good, bipartisan support to get those across the finish line.”

State Rep. Jaime Greene, the minority vice chair of the House Education Committee said she supports the legislation and “it just needs to pass.” Greene also said the M-STEP scores are not particularly helpful for individual students and families but “more important for district accountability and comparing district to district.” 

Republican State Board of Education member Nikki Snyder said local school board members should be pushing school districts to choose “high-quality curriculum.” 

A ‘disjointed’ system

Rice said the MDE is also continuing to encourage elementary educators to take the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS training. MDE administers a grant to pay for teachers to take the training and lawmakers set aside $10 million for the program in the most recent state education budget.

The training includes “phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and written language,” according to the vendor website about the Michigan program.

Paul Liabenow, executive director of the Michigan Elementary & Middle School Principals Association, said many districts are “doubling down” on providing support on math and reading.

Still, he said more can be done to ensure teachers actually get the training they need.

“I believe that we need to incentivize district participation in teacher training in LETRS so that every teacher across the state of Michigan...is trained as a matter of requirement,” he said.  

Venessa Keesler, president and CEO of Launch Michigan, which advocates for education reform, said the results show there needs to be change in the education system.

“Right now, our system is just very disjointed, and that makes it hard to have those shared priorities and agree on how we're going to reach them.” 

In his statement this week, Rice also reiterated his position that students who lost “considerable in-person instruction” during COVID may need additional in-person instruction time, such as a longer school year or instruction in the summer. 

“Our in-person instructional school year was skinny before the pandemic and, for some students, became skinnier during and after the pandemic,” Rice said.

Some school districts offer summer school, Plus, the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential is administering $57 million in grants so that community organizations can provide programming to students in the summer and before and after school. 

Lawmakers approved $150 million in 2023 for the Mi Kids Back on Track program, which is for tutoring and other academic catch up initiatives. Lawmakers did not renew the funding in 2024 but school districts are allowed to use their existing funds. 

What to make of results

Education experts and school district officials often recommend caution with state standardized test results, arguing that a student’s performance on a test taken once a year does not tell the full picture of their academic level. 

“The M-STEP assessments are rigorous and not meant to measure reading ability or math ability by themselves,” said Andrew Middlestead, director of the MDE Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability. 

“Rather, they are meant to measure understanding of a broad set of rigorous subject matter standards. Students who score below proficient are not necessarily performing below their grade level, and many who are below proficient perform well in high school, college, and in their chosen professions.”

The new state test results come roughly two months before the November election, where voters will select local and state school board members, along with representatives for the Michigan House. 

Democrats who currently control both chambers of the Legislature have passed laws lowering the amount test scores can factor into educator evaluations, restored several subjects of collective bargaining and removed the requirement that school districts hold back third-grade students who were behind in reading.

There remain large gaps between test scores of students who are economically disadvantaged and those who are not, according to the new results. 

This year, third grade students from economically disadvantaged families scored 30.2 percentage points lower in reading than their peers and 32.7 points lower in third grade math, on average.

Tara Kilbride, interim associate director of EPIC, the research group at MSU, said the results aren’t surprising. 

“There's clearly something happening in ELA that's different from the trends in math,” Kilbride said.

Even though the state has removed requirements about holding third graders back with low scores, Kilbride said there should still be a focus on providing students with literacy interventions “because this is a long standing issue in Michigan that didn't start with a pandemic.”

Kilbride noted that in third grade reading exams, fewer students were assessed as being advanced in 2023-24 compared to both last school year and 2018-19. 

That means there are fewer students who are ahead, more students who are behind and about the same number of students in between, she said. 

Where does Michigan go from here?

Michigan will have to acknowledge that there is a problem with the way it approaches early literacy and make big changes in order to turn the current trajectory, said Roza. 

“At this point, the state and districts really need to dig into their data to figure out which schools and classrooms are using an outdated reading approach and switch them out,” she said.

Schools must also make it a priority to catch up the third and fourth graders who were behind in Spring 2024, said Roza.

“We need to push through and get this done for these students, or it will have lifetime impacts for them,” she said. 

Reading curriculum may not be the only factor causing students to fall behind. Chronic absenteeism, which is particularly prevalent in Michigan schools, may be another cause, said Roza.

“We see districts hiring reading coaches and tutors, but if kids don't come to school they don't benefit from it,” she said.

Michigan had one of the worst rates of chronic absenteeism in the nation in the 2021-22 school year. Though the rates improved the next year, 30% of the state’s students were still missing 10% or more of their school days.

What does this mean for Michigan highschoolers? 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has set a goal of 60% of working age adults getting a college degree or skills certificate by 2030. The state says that rate is currently 51.1%.

But the latest scores show that a significant group of students may not be prepared for college coursework.

On the SAT, 25.1% of 11th grade students met or exceeded college readiness expectations. That was 3.1 percent points lower compared to results for students in the same grade last year and 8.8 percentage points lower compared to the 2018-19 school year.

In English language arts, 51.3% of 11th grade students were proficient. 

“Are we OK with roughly half of our students graduating with a diploma and not being prepared?,” Snyder, the Republican board member, said. 

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Isabel Lohman covers K-12 and higher education for Bridge Michigan. You can reach her at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Mike Wilkinson is a data reporter for Bridge Michigan. You can reach him at mwilkinson@bridgemi.com.