MinnPost is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking here. Sign up for our newsletter for more stories straight to your inbox.
Yes.
During the 2022-23 school year, Minnesota had 75 schools that had a 0% proficiency rate in math, according to a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Education.
Statewide, 1,810 schools recorded valid math assessments, and about 4.1% of those reported 0% proficiency in math, Kevin Burns, the department’s communications director, told MinnPost.
Burns noted that 57 of the 75 schools were non-traditional programs, such as area learning centers, care and treatment facilities, and special education programs, which have smaller enrollments and serve students “experiencing multiple barriers to academic success.”
In the 2021-22 school year, Minnesota also had more than a dozen schools with a 0% proficiency rate in math, according to publicly available data from the state education department. Overall, 44.6% of all students tested on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment scored proficient in mathematics. Students in the Minneapolis Public Schools had a proficiency rate of 32.9% on the MCA.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources:
-
Google Docs 2022 Public School MCA MTAS Math Proficiency
Jayne Williamson-Lee is a freelance science journalist who is part of MinnPost’s fact briefs team.
Math teachers need to be recruited, hired, and encouraged. I know some students who did very well in engineering school programs after high school, but didn’t have decent exposure to calculus by a teacher who understood calculus. They concluded the math teacher didn’t grasp the subject matter but tried to explain it anyway.
We need to pay our competent educators properly and give them the respect they deserve. Many kids are slipping further behind from missing classroom hours lost to COVID. The angry parents dragged into book bans, disrupting school meetings and making teachers feel besieged by people who have no idea what goes on in a classroom. Like the nurses, they are leaving in droves.
This bodes a terrible future for many students.