Maine’s test scores on a national standardized test have taken a staggering tumble since the 2000s, when Maine was hailed as one of the higher-performing states in the country.

Now Maine fourth graders rank in the bottom 15 states on standardized test performance in math and reading, and eighth graders have fallen to at or below average performance. 

A Maine Monitor analysis of 20 years of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card — showed that low-income students and those with disabilities have seen the biggest losses in their test results since performance peaked in the 2000s.

But Maine leaders have struggled to react with a comprehensive effort to improve results due to a lack of consensus over what issues to address, as well as hesitancy to trust or use the test scores as a way to measure how Maine students are performing.

A representative, randomly selected sample of about 7,000 public school students in grades four and eight take the tests every other year, according to the Maine Department of Education. 

“There are so many different potential contributing factors. It’s not about finding any one single cause for this. It’s more important to now ask, ‘What do we do with this information?’’” said Janet Fairman, a researcher at the Maine Education Policy Research Institute, which conducts analyses for lawmakers. “At the state level, there is a huge need for strong leadership on education. And that can make a real difference.”

Many have blamed the decline in testing performance on a variety of issues that plague Maine, such as absenteeism, smart-devices in the classroom, poverty and teacher shortages.

Teachers and education researchers have also argued that skyrocketing education costs in a tight budget landscape can limit schools’ abilities to pay for professional development, fund math and literacy coaches, or make sure instructional materials are up to date.

Maine now ranks in the bottom five states for the number of hours it instructs students each year, according to a study by the education research institute. Another study showed it’s common for Maine schools to rely on instructional materials that have been proven ineffective to teach core subjects such as reading.

The institute’s research also points to a rise in disruptive behavior in classrooms that makes it more difficult for students to learn.

Many states across the nation are seeing declines in test scores. The Boston Globe’s magazine reported this month that New England states especially are suffering in NAEP performance, losing ground to historically low-performing southern states since the No Child Left Behind Act was replaced in the 2010s. The controversial policy aimed to close performance gaps among marginalized students and boost academic competitiveness, but schools that did not perform well risked losing staff or federal funding.

Maine and Vermont’s reading scores dropped the equivalent of 1.5 grade levels since 2013, The Globe wrote, and New England leaders had “limited interest in truly confronting the region’s decline.” 

The Maine Department of Education did not publicly respond to the story, but the Vermont Agency of Education did, pushing back at the idea that leaders did not care.

“As an education leader, and as a parent of school-aged children, these are difficult words to read,” said Zoie Saunders, Vermont’s education secretary. “However, we need to own the reality that Vermont can do a better job of serving our students and supporting our teachers, particularly in rural and economically disadvantaged areas of the state.”

‘This is a sample’

Carrie Woodcock of the Maine Parent Federation, which helps families navigate services for children with disabilities, found the declining performance among disabled and low-income students unsurprising, though she cautioned that testing doesn’t always show what students have learned. 

Students with additional needs, such as those with autism, attention hyperactivity disorder or dyslexia, have a harder time accessing standard education. In Maine, special education students — those with plans that allow specialized instruction or other accommodations — are more likely to be siloed off from the general student population compared with the national average, according to a recent Maine Monitor analysis.

All of the data, Woodcock argued, speak to the need for “universal design for learning,” a method of teaching that allows students to learn topics multiple ways and offers more opportunities for students with disabilities to learn in the general classroom.

“When this is done with fidelity, both our disadvantaged and disabled students, as well as our typically developing students, will perform better on testing,” Woodcock said.

Even as the overall student population has declined, Maine has seen an increase in the number of students in special education since 2012. It has also seen an increase in students with challenging backgrounds. Between 2012 and 2022, there was almost a 50-percent increase in the number of economically disadvantaged high school students in Maine, and the number of homeless students doubled. 

But the demographic-based and broad NAEP results are hard to interpret, said Jesse Hargrove, the president of the Maine Education Association, the union for teachers. That’s in part because the testing pool is small.

“These assessments are a very small snapshot, and so it’s important to really keep in mind that this is a sample,” Hargrove said. “It’s not indicative of every student experience throughout the state.”

The importance of the NAEP test shouldn’t be overstated, but it is “unwise to disregard it entirely,” said Chris Domaleski, executive director of the Center for Assessment in New Hampshire. Rather it should be looked at alongside other measures of student performance.

The NAEP assesses a sample of students, does not report results for individual school districts and is not aligned with each state’s education standards, he said. But these factors don’t undermine the credibility of the test. No measure is perfect, he said, and other tests have limitations, too.

Maine has its own standardized test, which is given to about 85,000 students each year. Its results tell a similar story: student performance has gotten worse recently. However, the state’s test changed frequently in past years, leaving the NAEP as the only exam that Maine can use to reliably compare results over decades.

To comprehensively understand student performance, it’s important to look at a variety of data points, Hargrove said. For instance chronic absenteeism is still up 7 percent since pre-pandemic levels, meaning fewer students are showing up to school.

Hargrove also pointed to several datasets from the state and foundations that show poverty, food insecurity and a lack of early intervention services are barriers to learning.

The teacher shortage in Maine is also a factor, he argued. More than a fifth of teachers in Maine are early on in their careers or have not completed their training to become fully certified, according to state data.  

Behavioral and mental health care in schools could help students, he said. Last spring, the union advocated for bills such as L.D. 858 and L.D. 1097 to boost funding to schools for these services and require schools to train staff in de-escalation interventions. The bills were held by the governor, postponing a decision.

‘I think we’re in trouble’

Earlier this year, officials from the Maine Department of Education told lawmakers that the NAEP results were simply a data point, not “good or bad,” The Portland Press Herald reported. Another official at the state agency pointed to “serious concerns” about the validity and fairness of the NAEP test.

The education department did not grant an interview to The Monitor, but spokesperson Chloe Teboe said in a recent email that assessments are one measure of student success, and it is working with educators to make sure students have solid foundations in reading and math.

It also said that it has “consistently recognized that assessments — including the NAEP — offer snapshots of student performance that, when combined with multiple other measures, can inform local interventions or even statewide policy.”

“The Maine DOE takes the declines in NAEP score estimates seriously and believes they warrant attention and investigation into how they relate to overall student learning in Maine,” Teboe wrote. “It is challenging, however, to identify one primary reason for fluctuation in score estimates, as state-level results are subject to many variable factors.” 

State senator and 2026 governor hopeful James Libby (R-Standish) sits on the Maine Legislature’s education committee, and said lawmakers have not done enough in reaction to the NAEP scores. Maine schools need to have longer school days; more time spent on core subjects such as math, reading, science and civics; more professional training for teachers; and fewer distractions such as cell phones in schools, he said. 

The co-chairs of the committee, Sen. Joseph Rafferty (D-Kennebunk) and Rep. Kelly Murphy (D-Scarborough), said the committee has always looked critically at how it can help students succeed in Maine.

“It’s something we need to continue to address,” Murphy said in a written statement. “Student success depends on so many factors, including family life outside of the classroom, and improving student performance requires a comprehensive approach. It will include focusing on evidence-based practices in reading and math, providing teachers with better access to high-quality instructional resources, and ensuring school funding from the state is distributed across Maine more equitably.”

The state education department announced on October 9 that it plans to strengthen “back-to-basics reading and math skills” in Maine at the direction of Gov. Janet Mills. The effort, called the Maine State Reading and Math Action Plans, aims to increase evidence-based instruction in schools and boost training for educators to improve kids’ literacy and math skills.

Reading and math advisory councils will oversee the implementation of the plans and monitor statewide progress, the department said. The plans were developed with input from experts and were informed by data such as from the NAEP test.

However, the education department explained to The Monitor in an email that, since Maine is a local-control state where individual districts have significant control over schooling, the state agency cannot force them to adopt certain curricula and does not generally track curricula or instructional practice changes.

A lack of accountability has contributed to worsening scores, according to two education experts who faced questions from Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins on Maine’s test scores in September. Neither expert could speak specifically to Maine’s decline, but they pointed to an overall lack of incentive for schools to succeed.

“If we don’t, in fact, reward achievement and incentivize achievement, I think we’re in trouble,” said Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, an independent branch at Stanford University that is often described as right-leaning. 

Martin West, an education professor at Harvard University and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees NAEP, agreed that there has been a “softening” of accountability policies that helped drive improvement in the 1990s and 2000s. But the test scores reflect more than just school practices.

“We should think of [NAEP] as capturing not just what’s happening in schools, but in the economy, in society generally,” West said. “As you look for explanations, you need to think about both of those factors.”

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.