Maine draws criticism for concealing pre-pandemic data on student performance

Is Maine concealing data on student learning loss after the pandemic?

A research organization has criticized the state for not making data on student achievement and other metrics publicly available, which “conceals crucial information from parents and other stakeholders,” scholars argue.

The Center on Reinventing Public Education released its report this month, giving Maine, New Mexico, and North Dakota zero out of 21 possible points on the accessibility of student data before 2020. 

“Parents … and other stakeholders may not be aware of the magnitude of this issue when states don’t make this data available for comparison, given how important (the COVID-19 pandemic) was in disrupting education,” said Morgan Polikoff, professor at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education who contributed to the report. 

Long-term data helps measure transparency for public education, which is needed at this time to combat pandemic learning loss, Polikoff told the Maine Morning Star. 

The organization used metrics such as achievement levels in mathematics, English language arts, science and social studies. 

It also noted high school graduation rates, English learner proficiency and chronic absenteeism or similar indicators. 

One reason for Maine’s low grade could stem from the frequent alterations to state-level assessments, which changed at least five times in the past 15 years, according to journalist Eesha Pendharkar. 

“These testing discrepancies have continued post-pandemic,” she writes. “Testing paused for the 2019-20 school year, and the way Maine students are evaluated has not remained consistent since.” 

Even with the changing assessments, Maine could have followed the model of other states in providing data while explaining its different testing models, according to Polikoff. 

“Maine has clearly made the choice to not present any information from pre-2020 and that might be … because they change their tests, and so they don’t really feel it’s appropriate,” he said.  

“But I would argue that that might be true of the standardized test data, but it’s definitely not true of some of the other indicators.” 

On an A-F scale, 34 states and D.C. “received a grade of C or worse for their efforts to provide accessible, transparent school performance data going back to pre-COVID times,” according to the report. 

Only seven states – Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee – received an A rating from reviewers. 

In addition to combating learning loss, public schools need to improve their data usability to help answer “basic questions about school effectiveness,” researchers noted. 

“Transparency in state data reporting is only one piece of the puzzle, but it is a foundational one,” the report concludes. “Parents, educators, and community leaders cannot advocate for and solve problems they do not know exist.”