Maryland education department will look for new assessment testing after MCAP scores improve

Maryland students improved in every subject across standardized test scores in the 2024-2025 school year.

The Maryland State Department of Education revealed the latest Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP) data to the State Board of Education on Tuesday.

While there are improvements overall, math continues to lag, with only a little more than a quarter of students considered proficient. Some other troubling trends carried over as well.

But, the state's top education leaders revealed the department is looking at replacing MCAP for a new assessment.

You can see how your school district performed here. 

A clean sweep, with a caveat

Nearly all grades improved on all subjects in the MCAP assessment.

English Language Arts was the highest, with 50.8% of students proficient. That's a 2.4% increase from the 2023-2024 school year.

Math, meanwhile, remains the lowest, with only 26.5% of students proficient. This subject had the same increase as English.

Science scores increased after both 5th graders and 8th graders saw decreases in the 2023-2024 school year.

In math, students who are multilingual, economically disadvantaged, and students with disabilities continued to test the worst in the subject.

Dr. Carey Wright, state superintendent of schools, said a technical advisory committee has taken a closer look at math testing -- finding anomalies.

"Obviously, when we listen to the principals, teachers, and superintendents across the state -- [asking us to] take a look at it -- now that we have a technical advisory committee, that's exactly what we did," Dr. Wright said.

When board members gave their thoughts on the data and asked questions, member Chet Chesterfield asked the department to look into why the same demographics of students are having the lowest test scores.

"Try to get an understanding of why the same set of folks are underperforming, no matter what area that you take a look at," Chesterfield said. "Also, how does it relate to the districts?"

The state board of education will be doing a deep dive into the latest MCAP results in September.

A new assessment

Dr. Wright said the technical advisory committee's work has prompted the need for a new assessment, saying curriculum and MCAP may not be completely aligned anymore.

"You want to have the confidence that the assessment you are administering is aligned to your standards, which is exactly the reason we revised all of our standards so that they're now all current," Dr. Wright said. "Then by the time the assessment for science is procured, we will have our science standards in order to have that assessment aligned to that as well."

Board member Dr. James Bell applauded the decision to find a new assessment.

"If there's no alignment, then that could be a big cause of what we're seeing right now with respect to low performance," Bell said. "If you're teaching one thing and assessing another, it just doesn't make sense."

A new testing assessment wouldn't be implemented in schools until the 2026-2027 school year.

Statewide cellphone policy guidance

The state Board of Education also unanimously approved a resolution encouraging all school districts to have a clearly defined policy on cellphones, recommending leaving room to revisit and amend these policies as needed.

"I think we should feel very confident about the direction we're headed here with some high-level principals, and providing the resources for districts," said board president Dr. Joshua Michael. "Then [also] really working with communities to establish these policies."

Eighteen of Maryland's 24 school districts have some kind of cellphone policy in place already.