Maine students have been back in schools for two years, but their test scores aren’t improving post-pandemic (Getty Images)
Maine students’ test scores are not showing signs of academic recovery, based on most recent national academic assessments. While the reasons are hard to pinpoint, they’re even harder to address, given the challenges districts face while trying to help students academically recover, experts, educators and state officials said.
Some experts say low test scores are due to a failure to incentivize districts to use evidence-based literacy and math programs. Others say Maine’s strong prioritization of local control means the state doesn’t intervene enough, leaving it up to districts to figure out their own academic recovery strategies. Teachers and administrators see the scores as proof that further investment in public education is needed. And almost everyone agrees: assessment results are just one piece of the puzzle.
Maine is also dealing with chronic absenteeism, student behavior issues, low teacher pay and staffing shortages, and threats from President Donald Trump’s administration to cut education funding, compounding academic recovery efforts.
One thing is clear: Maine students are not learning as well as they did before the pandemic.
“If I was asked to point to, why are Maine students struggling, I do think it’s because, unfortunately their classroom teachers do not have access to the best materials and methods for basic instruction,” said Rachel Brown-Chidsey, a professor of educational and school psychology at the University of Southern Maine who consults with several school districts on academic progress.
“If you peel away the other universal variables that influenced kids in every state, and including the pandemic, that the lack of incentive or requirement to use evidence-based instructional practices in the elementary grades is the single biggest contributing factor to low test scores,” she said.
Last month, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, pronounced nape), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Education, released national and state-by-state results, which in some cases reflected the worst average scores since 1992 for Maine students.
At a legislative meeting in early February, members of the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee expressed disappointment in the NAEP results and told Maine Department of Education representatives that their response to the concerning results was “not sufficient.”
“I’m very, very unhappy,” Rep. Holly Sargent (D-York) said during the meeting.
The Maine Department of Education has generally not prioritized tests as a metric of success. Instead, the DOE has taken a holistic approach, measuring several indicators of student success, including how consistently they’re attending school and their social emotional well-being, which research has shown are important factors in supporting students’ needs.
“When we compare across the country, I don’t want to be at the bottom. None of us want our children at the bottom … so I’m having a hard time filtering this to become comfortable with what our practices are in this state,” said Rep. Sheila Lyman, R-Livermore Falls.While staff members underscored DOE’s approach at the meeting, the department is also worried about test scores, said spokesperson Chloe Teboe.
“Information from the field, as well as data from broader national assessments, indicates that early and elementary literacy have not rebounded well following the learning disruption by the pandemic,” she said in a statement. “This is of great concern to the Maine Department of Education — and it is a matter that the department takes seriously.”
What the scores mean
The national assessments paint a grim picture of academic performance for Maine students. In three of four testing categories, Maine students had the lowest average scores since 1992, when NAEP results were first reported. In 2022, Maine was the only state to have record lows in all four testing categories, and according to 2024 data, scores only got worse since then.
But NAEP is only a snapshot. The test is administered every two years to a representative sample of 1,700 to 1,900 fourth and eighth graders with reading and math scores recorded on a scale of 0 to 500.
Maine students used to do far better on the test before the pandemic, which continues to negatively impact student learning.
“I am concerned with the decline in the scores, but I do think it’s only one piece of data,” said Steven Bailey, executive director of the Maine School Management Association. “I would want to have more than just one data point to be able to say Maine … isn’t doing well.”
But that state-level testing data is not consistently available in Maine. The state has changed assessments at least five times in the past decade, according to the Maine Department of Education, so there’s no longitudinal comparison for NAEP scores. According to the latest state assessments from 2023-24, about 65%of students performed at or above grade level in English Language Arts, and about 47% were at or above grade level in math.
“One would have to ask, ‘Why do Maine students appear to be much more proficient on our statewide assessments than they do on the NAEP?’” said Janet Fairman, codirector of the Maine Education Policy Research Institute (MEPRI). “If you see sort of a big mismatch, then you know you could draw the conclusion that Maine’s assessments aren’t as rigorous. Don’t expect as much as the national assessment.”
Every two years, NAEP compares state standards to the national test, often finding that the national level of proficiency is much higher than what most states deem proficient in math and reading. For the most recent year, Maine was one of two states whose fourth and eighth grade reading scores couldn’t be compared to the federal test. In fourth grade math, Maine was the only state where a national comparison was not made.
That’s because the state was using an interim assessment that year, according to Grady Wilburn, a statistician for the National Center on Education Statistics.
Bailey said the changing assessment methods have been problematic for the districts.
“We’ve wanted to have something that’s been consistent enough that we can look at to know: Are we improving? Are we not improving? What do we need to do to improve?” he said.
How local control can impact test results
Defying the nationwide trend, some states made academic gains in the recent NAEP tests. Most of those states rely on top-down approaches to curriculum. For example, Louisiana oversees what districts are teaching, and whether teachers have adequate training to adopt evidence-based curriculum.
Local control is a requirement of the Maine Constitution, Teboe said, and districts “tailor curricula and programs to their local students’ unique needs, while still benefiting from state standards, state-created resources, and statewide accountability systems.”
The department provides statewide guidance and resources for implementing evidence-based best practices, she said, “while also being flexible and responsive to the needs of individual school communities.”
Profesor Brown-Chidsey said those resources are nowhere near enough. In terms of teacher training and guidance for educators about what resources to use, “Maine Department of Education is, I’m going to say, woefully inadequate,” she said.
A side effect of local control is that socioeconomic disparities in academic recovery are exacerbated when districts are left to their own devices.
“Each district holds the responsibility to decide what instructional materials and practices will be used in those classrooms,” Brown-Chidsey said. “And that means that whether or not you are Portland Public Schools with 5,000 students, or you are the tiniest little district in the county, you have that same responsibility, but not even resources.”
Districts are often also left to determine what data they collect, she said, which means affluent districts in southern Maine collect extensive assessment data that they use to determine what to teach.
Lack of evidence-based curricula
In terms of instructional programs and methods, the state offers suggestions on literacy programs and launched a “Math Pathways toolkit” to help families and educators find out about their options for math classes, including sample courses that schools can offer, according to DOE. But a 2023 MEPRI report found that which literacy programs schools are using can vary widely, and districts aren’t always choosing evidence-supported programs.
“A surprising number of schools and teachers don’t have any reading program specified in their district to use. They’re left up to themselves to figure out how to teach reading,” Fairman said. “But the vast majority of school districts in Maine that did have a reading curriculum for early elementary grades, the programs they were selecting have been proven to be ineffective.”
The report found that the two most common reading programs being used in elementary grades in Maine schools both did not meet quality standards, according to EdReports, a national nonprofit that studies and reviews instructional materials.
Only 20% of administrators who responded to a MEPRI survey were using programs that met the EdReports quality requirements, which are based on the widely accepted Common Core standards.
Overall, teachers were far more satisfied with their district’s math program than their
reading program, the report said. The most commonly used math programs in Maine all met the EdReports standards, which are widely used across the country.
Still, Fairman said teachers told researchers that they often go on the internet or ask colleagues for ideas of materials to use for instruction due to lack of robust guidance from the state.
“But I think the state is reluctant to give that kind of guidance at that level because of this tradition of local control,” she said.
“In other states, they give more guidance. They vet or curate the list of instructional programs that schools might choose from rather than leaving that entirely up to schools, because it’s hard to do without good information.”
Students attendance and behavior issues
Like other states, Maine is struggling to cope with the elevated mental health challenges students came back to school with post-pandemic.
“Kids have been back in person, in classrooms for two years, and we’re still seeing high levels of anxiety and mental health issues and behavior problems,” Fairman said.
Many districts and teachers are reporting increased challenges dealing with student behavioral issues, Bailey said. Districts need support from the state to address those, and in that case, the state is helping, he said.
Student attendance and engagement are also critical to recovery, according to the DOE. Chronic absenteeism (defined as missing 10% or more school days) is up from pre-pandemic levels in the past few years, from about 16% in 2018-19 to 23% in 2023-24.
The DOE’s focus on whole child support means it prioritizes collecting data on absenteeism and other metrics beyond test scores. For example, chronic absenteeism actually decreased from a spike in 2021-22 of 29%.
“Districts and teachers and principals are having to deal with way more significant challenges than they were here prior to the pandemic,” Bailey said. “So part of this need, really, is to readdress what it means to be a school and what’s needed to be able to be successful as a student in school.”
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