Colorado student achievement appears to be approaching pre-pandemic levels, but many students are still recovering from the upheaval of the COVID-19 crisis, according to data from the 2022 Colorado Measures of Academic Success exam results.

Students across the state had been making gradual improvements in English and math proficiency since 2014, when the Colorado Department of Education first began administering the CMAS exams. Testing was suspended in 2020 due to the pandemic but resumed the following year.

A Flourish chart

In 2019, the last full school year before the pandemic, 44.5% of Colorado students met or exceeded expectations in English, and 32.7% reached that level in math.

Education trends were on the right track prior to pandemic

Last year, student achievement took a step back, with the statewide average declining to 43% for English and plunging more steeply to 27.4% for math.

In 2022, CDE data indicate performance rates are beginning to climb back to where they were before the pandemic, with more significant improvement in math than in English Language Arts. While 43.5% of students met or exceeded state standards in English — an improvement of half a percentage point from 2021 — math scores recovered four percentage points for a statewide average of 31.4%.

“Today, we celebrate the fact that student scores were better in most cases than they were in 2021, but we continue to face the challenge of fully bringing kids back to the levels they were before the disruptions of the pandemic as well as closing the historic opportunity and achievement gaps,” said Colorado Education Commissioner Katy Anthes. “The hard work from teachers, parents and students over the past year has been remarkable, and with support from the COVID relief funds targeted at addressing lost learning opportunities, I’m confident we will continue our rebound.”

In 2019, English achievement scores from Denver Public Schools had reached a seven-year high, with 42.7% of students reaching or surpassing state standards. In 2021, that percentage declined to 37%. In math, 32.7% of DPS students met or exceeded expectations in 2019. That number dropped more than 10 percentage points in 2021, with 21.9% or students at or above standards.

Businessman and education choice advocate Steve Schuck said the 2022 CMAS results offer little to celebrate when fewer than half of the state’s students are where they should be in English, and less than one-third are achieving at or above standards in math.

“Public schools simply aren’t performing at the levels they could and should, and there’s very little that should give anybody any encouragement that it’s going to get any better in the short term,” he said.

Schuck said the CMAS scores are a referendum on how the public school system serves — or often fails to serve — its students, and that the system has little motivation to improve itself.

“Public education, in general, is a monopoly,” he said. “If the customer isn’t dissatisfied with the quality of the product, why should the provider try to make it better?”

How is your Colorado school district performing with its test scores?

Assessment scores rebounded in 2022, but fell short of pre-COVID levels. In English, 39.4% of students met or exceeded standards, compared with 28.8% in math.

Participation rates, which plunged to a historically low 49.3% in 2021, bounced back to 90.2% in 2022, but still fell well below the 97.6% participation rate in 2019.

Watch: CMAS scores from the spring reveal the effects of COVID-19 on education from KUSA