The St. Louis Park school district is trying to convince high school students that state standardized tests are worth their time, at a moment when many districts are trying to measure pandemic learning loss and figure out where they still need to make up ground.
The rate at which St. Louis Park students opt out of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA) outpaces neighboring suburbs: Only about half of high school students took the test in 2019, according to district data, down from about three-quarters of students in 2017. In Hopkins, Eden Prairie and Edina, well over 80% of students took the tests in 2019, as did more than 90% of students in Minnetonka and Wayzata.
There are many reasons students and families might choose not to take another standardized test, but the more students opt out, the more murky the view teachers and the district have of how they are serving students.
"The MCA data, as a high school teacher, really is used for us to assess: Are we meeting what the state of Minnesota says we need to be doing?" said St. Louis Park High School math teacher Kristin Johnson. "Are we having the kids interact with the material on the level the state expects?"
The tests are no longer tied to funding, and many districts have stopped using the scores to decide if students can take honors classes.
Students are assessed with grades and other standardized tests, said Silvy Un Lafayette, director of assessment for St. Louis Park, but the MCA helps assess teachers and the district as a whole.
When students opt out, the data school districts receive from the state Department of Education count their scores as if they got every question wrong. Overall scores, including all those opt-outs, factor heavily into online school-rating systems, including those used by real estate listing sites, and can make schools look worse to outsiders compared with neighboring districts.
"It looks like St. Louis Park is doing less well academically," Johnson said. "But what we have is an opt-out issue."
But some testing critics worry the emphasis on test scores puts unnecessary pressure on students.
"No child should be responsible for that type of assessment," said Shannon Essler-Petty, a former education professor who has been encouraging families to opt out of the MCA. The level of stress some students feel taking the hours-long tests does not seem commensurate with the usefulness of the data, she said.
For 11th graders in particular, spring brings a barrage of standardized testing with both the MCA and the college-entrance ACT. For some students and families, Lafayette said, it's worth it to reduce stress by opting out of the MCA, because the ACT has more bearing on a student's chances of getting into a selective college.
Additionally, some families — both white families and families of color — consider the tests racist, because of some test questions' implicit assumptions about a student's culture. Some see opting out as taking a stand, Lafayette said.
With these objections in mind, St. Louis Park school administrators have been trying to convince students and families the MCA is worth it, with a messaging campaign that started in the fall of 2022 and continues as students test this month.
The focus is on the benefits students get from the MCA, Lafayette said. For one, schools in the Minnesota State College and Universities system use MCA scores to figure out if a student needs remedial coursework, which can add expense and time to a college degree.
There are also benefits while students are still in high school. If a St. Louis Park student is struggling in class but shows on the MCA that they know the content, Johnson said, the test result can sometimes be counted for a better grade, in turn helping that student graduate on time.
But Lafayette said the main purpose of the tests is to help teachers and school districts figure out how to do better in years to come — which will in turn help students.
"It's data that's going to help us improve," she said.
