Colorado students’ NAEP test scores mostly stable, as gap between low and high performers widens

Colorado students continue to perform better than students in many other states and showed slight improvements on national math and reading tests, but they’re still scoring below pre-pandemic levels.

The national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP, was given to fourth and eighth graders in the spring of 2024, and results were released Wednesday. The test is administered about every two years.

Test administrators determined that none of Colorado’s average score results represented a significant change from average scores in 2022. But a slightly higher percentage of Colorado students performed at basic and proficient levels in 2024 compared with 2022.

Part of the explanation for that is another trend NAEP identified this year nationwide: Students who are high performing continue to improve, while students who are typically low performing have continued to struggle. Average scores mask those widening gaps.

Compared with 2019, before the pandemic, Colorado students are making progress toward recovery in math at fourth and eighth grade, but in reading only at the eighth grade level.

Reading scores are a concern nationwide

In fourth grade reading scores, Colorado students have fallen further behind, following a national trend. In 2024, 36% of fourth graders tested proficient in reading, down from 38% in 2022.

Despite that drop, the state’s average reading score for fourth graders, 221, is still significantly higher than the national average of 214, and places Colorado near the top of all states.

The state’s performance on eighth grade reading scores held steady, breaking with the national trend of large declines. In 2024, 35% of Colorado students tested were proficient, up from 34% in 2022. The state change was not identified as statistically significant.

Nationally, reading scores had been declining since before the pandemic, so officials cautioned against blaming only the pandemic-era disruptions.

Colorado’s own data from CMAS tests also showed a drop in 2024 in fourth grade reading performance. The rate of students meeting expectations on those state tests dropped by 1.8 percentage points from the previous year, the largest drop of any grade level.

Colorado’s math test results were more encouraging

Colorado’s results for fourth graders taking NAEP math tests showed a significant increase in the percentage of students reaching proficiency. In 2024, 42% of those students reached proficiency, up from 36% in 2022.

Colorado has invested in math recovery since the pandemic, including making online programs and tutoring available for students statewide.

Colorado’s CMAS test results in math for 2024 were also more encouraging than literacy results. Students in elementary grades in 2024 posted higher rates of meeting and exceeding expectations than students did in 2019, before the pandemic.

On NAEP, where proficiency has a different definition, Colorado students are still not doing better than in 2019, however.

NAEP releases data for large urban districts, including Denver

Denver students had some reading scores that were better than scores in other cities for which the program compiled data, but in most categories, their improvement over 2022 wasn’t statistically significant.

Denver Public Schools students ranked near the top of the 25 cities in average scores for eighth grade reading. Denver’s average of 258 was up from 255 in 2022 and 257 in 2019. In 2024, 31% of eighth graders in Denver were proficient in reading, up from 28% in 2022.

The only improvement that was identified as significant in DPS was the increase in the proficiency rate for fourth grade math. In 2024, 36% of students tested proficient on that test, compared with 28% in 2022.

The NAEP standard for proficiency represents “competency over challenging subject matter, a standard that exceeds most states’ standards for proficient,” according to the federal agency that compiles the data.

In fourth grade reading, for instance, the administration states that students who test at the basic level, but below proficiency, may still have some reading ability to “provide some support for ideas related to the plot or characters.” Testing in the proficient category, above basic, might require a student to be able to “make complex inferences about the characters’ actions, motivations, or feelings, using relevant evidence within or across literary texts.”

Officials from the board who oversee the testing say it’s students who score below basic who may be struggling to read and warrant concern.

Among Colorado fourth graders, 35% tested below basic in reading in 2024, a higher percentage than anytime in the last two decades. In Denver, 42% tested below basic.

Among Colorado eighth graders, 26% tested below basic in reading, off from 27% in 2022. In Denver, this group accounted for 35%.

Nationally, the trends show that in many cases, the percentage of students in below-basic levels grew as students who typically perform at high levels did well, and groups of students who usually struggle are doing worse.

Hispanic students and those learning English as a new language struggle

In both Colorado and in Denver, Hispanic students and those identified as English learners continued to struggle and have the widest gaps compared with their counterparts.