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Semiannual update from Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment
Vol. 3, No. 2: April 14, 2025
By Jennifer Dugan
Director of Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment
As our division closes out its third school year providing this semi-annual newsletter, we reflect and endeavor to improve. In January 2025, we posted our first Division Annual Report. The division’s vision is “Every student, regardless of zip code and lived experience, receives a high-quality, well-rounded education.” We are proud of our efforts to increase student learning while keeping students at the center of all actions. While this newsletter typically has a forward-looking focus, I wanted to highlight the 2024 Division Annual Report through a series of Q&As. Much of the work included in the report provides the foundation for the next year’s projects; some of those projects are mentioned in the articles below.
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Q&A for 2024 Division Annual Report
Q: Why did you develop this annual report?
A: We want to highlight the successes and forward-movement that we have achieved in living our division mission and realizing our division vision.
Division Mission: Develop comprehensive tools and collaborative partnerships in support of districts, schools, and educators to equitably implement:
- High-quality academic standards
- Policies, programs, and practices that support instruction and learning
- Reliable assessments that provide actionable data for decision making
Division Vision: Every student, regardless of zip code and lived experience, receives a high-quality, well-rounded education due to all districts, schools, and educators utilizing the tools and resources provided by the division.
Q: Who is going to read this report?
A: While I would enjoy a world where everyone had a robust understanding of the high-quality support our division provides, I would settle for people knowing it was a resource this year. I want readers of this newsletter to be aware of the one-stop-shop for a list of standards implementation support and assessment enhancements.
Q: How is this report useful?
A: Providing a public resource allows for our readers to direct other educators to the supports provided by the division. We want to reach as many educators across the state as possible with the office hours, recorded trainings, and other opportunities
Q: Why should our readers care?
A: The annual reports provide an archive of previous semi-annual newsletters of sorts. I hope the annual report increases involvement in office hours, professional development opportunities, and assessment committees because more people are aware those opportunities exist.
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The Division of Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment aims to provide schools and districts with relevant and timely information. To do this, we send out three newsletters: the Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment Newsletter, the Educator Edition, and the Assessment Update.
The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) is collecting feedback on the communications in these newsletters so we can ensure future information is clear, timely, and relevant to your role. Please set aside 5–10 minutes to provide your feedback on the Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment Newsletter Survey. The survey will be shared in all three newsletters, and will be open April 14–May 30.
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The 2024 Minnesota legislative session made changes to state statutes that directly impact K–12 public health education based on Minnesota House File (HF) 5237. Please review the K–12 Health Legislation for a list of the statutes that directly impact the creation of the Health Standards.
In accordance with Minnesota Statutes 2024, section 120B.021, Minnesota is in the process of creating statewide Minnesota K–12 Academic Standards in Health. The Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) completed an initial public comment period per statutory rulemaking process April 4 and MDE has a public comment period on the Draft 1 Health Standards that closes April 9. If you would like to be notified of future public comment or feedback periods via email please sign up for the Health Standards Public Comment mailing list or visit the Health Education webpage. The general timeline is as follows:
- April–June 2025: Standards Committee Meetings
- Spring 2025: Draft 2 Public Comment
- Fall 2025: Draft 3 for Commissioner Review
- 2026: Dual notice rulemaking public comment period
- TBD: Rules adopted
To learn more about the Minnesota K–12 Academic Standards Development Process, please visit MDE’s Health Education webpage.
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The 2020 Minnesota Academic Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) will reach full implementation in school year 2025–26. According to Minnesota statute, all students must receive instruction and classroom-level assessment in standards and grade-level benchmarks. Districts and schools are required to ensure that all K–12 ELA curricula are aligned to the new standards, including adopted curricula and district-developed curricula.
Information about the standards, including downloadable standards documents, the ELA Glossary and Appendices, and more are available on the ELA Standards webpage. Standards implementation supports, such as a suggested implementation timeline, shifts in the standards, and the implementation webinar series are available on the ELA Standards Implementation webpage.
MDE hosts several meetings for district leaders focused on ELA Standards implementation each school year. Additionally, there are monthly standards and reading assessment office hours every second Tuesday of the month from 3–4 p.m. While the district leader meetings are more formal the office hours are an informal opportunity to drop in and ask any questions related to ELA standards, implementation, and the Reading MCA. Anyone who holds a leadership role related to English Language Arts is welcome to attend either of these meetings. For more information, please visit the ELA Standards webpage or contact mde.academic-standards@state.mn.us.
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MDE has hosted two virtual Curriculum Director Meetings in 2024–25. The third and final 2024–25 Curriculum Director Meeting will take place in May. Registration is required for the meeting:
Curriculum Director Meetings are intended to provide Curriculum Directors with legislative updates, standards implementation and timeline guidance, information around educational trends or topics, and technical assistance on various topics. It is also an opportunity to learn about other MDE divisions and supports.
Note: In response to the survey data from the last Curriculum Director Meeting in January, READ Act information will be delivered from the Literacy Division next to the May Curriculum Leaders Meeting from 8:30–9 a.m. and 3:30–4 p.m. Use the links above to access the full meeting sponsored by the Division of Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment and Literacy Division.
Curriculum Director Meetings are a great opportunity to connect with MDE’s Academic Standards team as well as network and meet other Curriculum Directors. Also, if your district experienced a Curriculum Director(s) change, visit Schools and Organizations (MDE-ORG). Within MDE-ORG, select Contact List from the left menu, then District Curriculum Leaders. There, you can verify and update the necessary contact information for your Curriculum Director(s).
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This grant primarily supports the expanded access of computer science education to all K–12 students in Minnesota, particularly those from underrepresented groups, to support local education agency (LEAs) in developing a plan for expanding and sustaining equitable computer science, and to support educators in delivering high-quality computer science instruction. The grants support professional development, resources, district planning, and other essential components to build a robust K–12 computer science education ecosystem within LEAs.
Twelve LEAs received Computer Science Education Advancement Grants and will work with leadership teams from the LEAs in a cohort model to share progress, challenges, and best practices around their grant goals. In the months ahead, grantees will participate in SCRIPT (Strategic CSforALL Resource & Implementation Planning Tool) training to develop a plan to develop an equitable and sustainable computer science education pathway within their LEA.
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Academic Standards in Science
Full implementation of the 2019 Minnesota Academic Standards in Science went into effect this school year.
MDE was selected as a founding member of the Collaborative for Advancing Science Teaching and learning in K–12 (CASTL K–12) organized by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Members of the Academic Standards, Instruction, and Assessment division will join members from across the United States to share and develop evidence-based practices for supporting K–12 science teaching and learning.
Next Generation Assessments: Science MCA-IV and Alt MCA
As academic standards are revised, a new series of assessments is developed to align with the updated standards. In MDE’s official documents and test data, the series number is added—at least in the initial reference—to indicate the academic content standards that are being measured. In the case of the alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards, the MTAS has been redesigned and renamed as the Alternate MCA to indicate this change in the new series as the new standards are implemented.
The Science MCA-III and Science MTAS were administered through 2024 and aligned to the 2009 Minnesota Academic Standards in Science. Spring 2025 is the first administration of the new Science MCA-IV and Science Alternate MCA assessments aligned to the revised 2019 Minnesota Academic Standards in Science. The assessment will still be administered in grades 5, 8, and once in high school.
With this first administration of the new series, resources and professional development have been provided throughout the year around the assessment to Special Education, Science educators and District Assessment Coordinators on the changes. There is a summary document outlining many of the new and enhanced test materials, tools, supports, and accommodations available for the Science MCA-IV as well as an overview of the changes for Alternate MCA.
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As the standards to which the assessments are aligned change, the assessments themselves must also change. Additionally, reports and resources to support the new assessments will also change. As part of a continuous improvement process, MDE is redesigning existing reports and resources to ensure we are supporting assessment data needs of educators, students, families, and policymakers, while meeting state and federal requirements.
Summary of Changes
With the changes that will continue across the assessment program over the next few years, the report redesign process will take multiple years to fully implement, meaning some reports and resources will not be available for the first year of the new Science MCA-IV and Alternate MCA (Alt MCA). The following list is a summary of changes beginning this year:
- On-Demand Reports available during the test administration will not be available for Science MCA and Alt MCA, as Standard Setting must first take place in order to report results for the new assessments. Reading and Mathematics MCA and MTAS On-Demand Reports are still available within 60 minutes after test submission.
- Individual Student Reports (ISRs): Science ISRs will look different than past years in how information is reported for students and families. MDE will be seeking feedback on these ISRs to inform additional changes as the other subjects transition to MCA-IV and Alt MCA. In addition, all three subjects will be provided as separate ISRs rather than combined as in past years. ISRs will continue to be separated as we transition to the new assessments. This will allow for a consistent format as subsequent subjects change to MCA-IV and Alt MCA in future years (reading in 2025–26 and mathematics in 2027–28).
- Benchmark Reports will only be provided for Reading and Mathematics MCA this year, but the Subscore Report will be updated to include information for Science MCA-IV.
Note: Reports on the MDE website will be updated to include the new data for Science MCA-IV and Alt MCA, and the District and School Student Results (DSR/SSR) files, Test Results Summary, Student Assessment History Report, public Assessment Files, and Minnesota Report Card will continue to be available as in past years.
Performance Level Descriptors and Their Uses
Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs), previously known as Achievement Level Descriptors (ALDs) in the MCA-III series, describe the knowledge and skills typically demonstrated by students on the assessment at each of the reporting levels. Student performance on the MCA-IV and Alt MCA is differentiated into four performance levels: Beginning, Intermediate, Meets, and Advanced. Students performing at the “Meets” and “Advanced” levels are considered in the academic standards.
PLDs have several purposes or uses, including:
- Facilitating interpretation of student test scores by educators and families
- Identifying classroom instructional changes that best support a student’s learning progression
- Supporting educators in the implementation of new standards and their analysis of the depth of their curriculum, instruction, and classroom assessments
- Providing the criteria for establishing performance levels (or cut scores) for the statewide assessment at standard setting
When a new assessment is developed, the PLDs go through several stages:
- Developed by Minnesota educators with the MDE Assessment team
- Reviewed and revised based on input from various educational partners, along with a public review and comment period
- Posted to the MDE website and used by the Standard Setting Committee
- Finalized after the standard setting process is completed and used for the life of the assessment.
While the main purpose of PLDs are the development and reporting on large scale assessments, many states have used PLDs as a guidance document to show the overall continuum of learning of their content standards. The PLDs can be helpful in the item development process for the MCAs, where questions can purposefully be written to cover the learning trajectory of students’ knowledge and skills of the science standards. PLDs can also help teachers differentiate instruction to maximize individual student outcomes and create formative assessments targeting performance levels for individuals or groups of students.
All available drafts of PLDs are posted on the MDE website. As of April 2025:
- Science MCA-IV and Science Alternate MCA PLDS have been written, reviewed and are ready for use in Standard Setting in July 2025.
- Reading MCA-IV and Reading Alternate MCA PLDs are posted on the website for educator and district staff review and input before the 2025–26 school year when the first administration of these new assessments will be administered.
Mathematics MCA-IV and Mathematics Alternate MCA PLDS are currently being reviewed and revised and will be posted for educator and district staff review and feedback in the Fall 2025.
Standard Setting Process
Developing a new assessment is a multi-year, ongoing process that includes many phases and committees, to ensure the test content is aligned to the new standards and relevant to student experiences. Minnesota educators and community members are involved in every step of the process. After students take the new assessment for the first time, the last step in the test development process, called standard setting, begins. This July, educators and community and educational partners will convene to complete this process for the Science MCA and Alt MCA.
The goal of standard setting is to recommend the minimum knowledge and skills students need to show on the assessment for each performance level. There are four performance levels for the new MCA-IVs and Alt MCAs: Beginning, Intermediate, Meets, and Advanced. During the standard setting process, the committee uses the Performance Level Descriptors to evaluate the depth of understanding students showed on the assessment and determine “cut scores,” which define the minimum score required for each performance level. Because the standard setting process must take place after the first administration, results for the science assessments will be delayed this year. Reading will follow the same process in Summer 2026, with mathematics in Summer 2028.
MDE created an overview video that describes the standard setting process, which is available on the Statewide Testing page of the MDE website.
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During the 2023 Legislative Session, a graduation requirement for personal finance was passed into law. The law requires all Minnesota high school students, beginning with the class entering ninth grade in 2024, to take a course for credit in personal finance in order to graduate.
A statewide working group was convened to develop guidance on the implementation of this new requirement. More information on the requirements and the guidance document are available on the MDE website.
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The Indigenous Education For All (IEFA) initiative strives to integrate Anishinaabe and Dakota cultural, historical, and contemporary contributions into Minnesota’s K–12 curriculum ensuring students and educators learn about local Indigenous communities, meeting academic standards and addressing educational gaps.
Within this initiative, MDE is currently collaborating with Tribal Nations and Urban Indigenous Communities to develop culturally specific resources and professional development aligned with the Standards Review Schedule. The Office of American Indian Education along with the Division of Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment developed a process for ensuring resources on the IEFA website are Tribally endorsed resources that meet IEFA requirements. This process is outlined in Minnesota Statutes, Section 120B.021, Subdivision 5. The process includes receiving resources from Tribal Nations, conducting a content standards alignment review, then providing the Tribal Nation with feedback from applicable academic standard content specialists.
These resources then are returned back to the Tribal Nations to receive Tribal Endorsement. Tribal Endorsement means, “An approval by the Tribal Nation of educational resource(s) used to implement standards as historically accurate, culturally relevant, community-based, contemporary, and developmentally appropriate for Indigenous Education for All.”
As a part of this process, the Office of American Indian Education and the Division of Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment continue to find ways to support educators with the implementation of the statutory requirement (Minn. Stat. 120B.021, subd. 2(b)[2023]).
MDE recognizes that some items may currently exist which not come from the Tribal Nations or which were developed prior to the Tribal Endorsement process being established; therefore, the following disclaimer may be found on those already existing resources stating, “The following materials were created in close partnership with the Tribal Nations in Minnesota. They were not created to fulfill the purposes of Indigenous Education for All.”
With the process and definition approved and established, the Office of American Indian Education and Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment Division are excited to announce that Indigenous Education for All resources are live and are released on the Indigenous Education For All page of the MDE website. Continue to visit this site as its repository will continue to grow as Tribal Nations resources become available.
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MDE has a new resource and will offer professional development (PD) beginning this summer to support arts educators to meet the statutory requirement to provide learning about the “contributions of Minnesota American Indian tribes and communities.”
Resource: The Essential Understandings About Native Arts in Minnesota can be used to support the development of arts curriculum that authentically and appropriately supports student learning about Dakota and/or Ojibwe arts. Used in conjunction with the required Minnesota K–12 Academic Standards in the Arts, these understandings are supplemental key concepts and perspectives regarding Dakota and Ojibwe arts and cultural expression. This resource also contains important considerations for developing curriculum and instruction about Dakota and Ojibwe arts and cultural expression. These materials were created in close partnership with the Tribal Nations in Minnesota. They were not created for the purposes of Indigenous Education for All (IEFA).
Professional Development: Registration will open in April for a free professional development opportunity, the Native Arts Institute & Cohort. This cohort supports K–12 arts educators to design meaningful and authentic learning experiences about Dakota and Ojibwe arts, learning with Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair; artists, makers, and performers from Tribal Nations in Minnesota; and MDE arts specialists. This year-long experience kicks off with a three-day summer institute Aug. 5–7 (location TBA). Participants will put their summer learning into action by developing and piloting at least one unit of study aligned to the 2018 arts standards that integrates Dakota and/or Ojibwe arts during the 2025–26 school year. Continued support during the following school year for this curriculum development will consist of three professional development days. Participants will receive a stipend and can be reimbursed for mileage. Members traveling further than 75 miles may be reimbursed for a hotel.
If you have questions or would like information about the next year-long professional development Native Arts Cohort for arts teachers, please contact Alina Campana, MDE Arts Specialist, at alina.campana@state.mn.us.
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Academic Standards, Instruction and Assessment
Minnesota Department of Education
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