Colorado high school students saw big drops in math scores. Is the new digital SAT to blame?

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By Yesenia Robles, Chalkbeat

Most Colorado students continue to make progress on state tests, with their scores nearly catching up from the dip they suffered following the pandemic, according to preliminary data released by the State Board of Education in June.

But one area of ​​concern is that high school math scores were significantly lower than in previous years as the state transitioned to a new digital PSAT and SAT.

Ninth grade results look particularly concerning. In 2019, 49.6% of ninth graders met or exceeded math standards on the PSAT. In 2024, only 39.5% did so, a difference of more than 10 percentage points. The 2024 rate also represents a significant decline from 2023, when 46.5% of students met expectations.

The ninth-graders were in fifth grade when the pandemic began and would have been in sixth grade, possibly starting high school, in the fall of 2020, when school was largely held online.

State officials said they are spending the summer analyzing the data to see if they will still be able to use it for annual school grades. The board voted to allow accountability officials to possibly set new cutoff targets for each performance level, based on this year’s score distribution, rather than using the same points as in previous years.

“What we’ve found is that this is really a new assessment,” said Lisa Medler, the state’s executive director of accountability and continuous improvement.

Colorado’s PSAT/SAT exam, which is used to assess all ninth-, 10th-, and 11th-graders and is also used as a way to demonstrate proficiency in English and math for graduation requirements, was revised for spring 2024. It was the first time the test was administered entirely online. The test was also reworked.

Initially, state officials believed the changes would not affect the meaning of grades compared to previous years, but now, after seeing such a large drop in the number of students meeting standards on the math test, officials suspect it might have to do with the tests. But they are not sure how much of it was due to difficulty with the tests or how much students may be struggling with math.

“I can’t unpack those changes in terms of what caused them,” said Joyce Zurkowski, director of assessment for the Colorado Department of Education. “Some of that is, in fact, due to changes in student performance, but some of that is due to a change in the test.”

In the lower grades, which take the state CMAS test, the results don’t show students struggling as much. Among third- through sixth-graders, the percentage of those meeting or exceeding math standards is now at or above pre-pandemic rates from 2019.

However, eighth-grade math scores on the CMAS test are still below standards. In 2019, 36.9% of eighth-graders met or exceeded math standards. In 2024, preliminary data shows that only 32.9% did so, a slight increase compared to 32.7% in 2023.

In addition to changes to the PSAT/SAT exam, officials are also looking at how an increase in the number of new students in the country this year might have also affected average scores.

This spring, the state exempted more students than usual from taking the tests, but new immigrant students who had not had to interrupt their studies were expected to take the math and science tests, with some accommodations. Their scores will not count toward school grades, but they could be affecting the state’s overall test averages.

State officials are auditing the data to finalize it and are studying whether it can be used in growth calculations and for other purposes in annual school grades. An update on the results is likely to be released later this month.

State officials said other states are also finding significant declines in scores with the new PSAT/SAT, but not all states use the test for all students or for accountability purposes.

Meanwhile, as students receive their own scores, state officials want students and families to know that changes to the test itself could be playing a role.

“So, juniors, if your older brother is giving you shit because he got better grades than you in math, tell him to take the new assessment and then you can have the conversation,” Zurkowski said.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at (email protected).