ACT replacing MCA for measuring student progress at EPHS

In a significant move, the Eden Prairie School Board has agreed to the school district’s request to replace the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA) with the ACT as the primary testing tool for assessing student academic progress at the high school level.

MCAs will remain Eden Prairie Schools’ primary standardized test in grades 3 through 8 and will still be offered at the high school, as required by law.

However, declining MCA participation among students at Eden Prairie High School (EPHS) has prompted a new switch of focus to the ACT as a measure of student progress. Only about 30% of EPHS students have been taking the MCA exam in recent years.

Conversely, the ACT, which EPHS administers free of charge in various forms starting with Pre-ACTs in grades 9 and 10, and then the actual test in grade 11 or 12, has a much higher participation level, at about 80% to 90%.

The district said that while the MCA test will still be administered at the high school, it believes the ACT’s broader participation will provide a more representative sample of students’ academic progress as well as their readiness for higher education.

Students opting out of MCAs: ‘No incentive’ to take test

The MCA has long been Minnesota’s main standardized achievement test; it measures reading, math, and science progress from elementary school through high school. Schools can use the results to measure student progress both individually and overall.

Each spring, to meet state and federal requirements, all public and charter schools across the state administer the MCA. The MTAS (Minnesota Test of Academic Skills) is offered as an alternative to the MCA for students who receive special education services and meet eligibility requirements.

MCA reading and mathematics tests are administered in grades 3 to 8 and in high school (students in grade 10 take the reading MCA, and students in grade 11 take the math MCA). The science MCA is administered to students in grades 5 and 8, and in whichever high school grade they take a life science or biology course.

Although the district wants students to take MCA tests, they are not required to do so. Parents and guardians can authorize students at all grade levels to opt out of testing.

While high school students can use MCA results for course placement at the Minnesota State system of colleges and universities or for Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) programs, the MCAs are not useful for applications to other colleges. They are also not used for course placement at the high school, although they still can help gauge individual student progress and help teachers guide learning.

When asked why they thought MCA participation was so low, one EPHS student said, “There’s no incentive, no benefit that we see. So none of us see a point in taking it, whereas taking the ACT actually impacts us for college.”

Another EPHS student said that they had not minded taking the MCAs in elementary and middle school, because “we didn’t get a choice. Also, the teachers made it seem really important.”

However, they said most high school students they know no longer consider the MCAs relevant to their current academic needs and priorities and, as a result, choose not to take the test.

Regardless of students’ reasons, the increasing trend of EPHS students opting out of the MCA has raised concerns about its efficacy as a comprehensive measure of academic achievement.

District presented justification during ends policies discussion

At the school board business meeting on June 24, Robb Virgin, the district’s assistant superintendent for secondary education, briefed the board on the reasons for the proposed change.

The conversation was part of a broader annual discussion in which the district presents for board approval its operational interpretations of the six ends policies set by the school board, as well as how it will measure results. Ends policies are the high-level goals the district uses to focus its efforts and priorities.

The district explained to the board how it intends to accomplish these goals during the 2024-25 school year, how it justifies its intended methods, and how it will measure results. Those results will then be presented to the board in October 2025.

For each of the six ends policies, the board voted first on whether they agreed with the district’s operational interpretation, then on whether they agreed with the district’s planned methods of measuring the results of that interpretation.

ACT is ‘the most meaningful external assessment that there is in terms of its utility in other places’

The new plan for using the ACT was described during the discussion about Ends Policy 1.3, which states, “Each student achieves individual growth expectations and proficiency annually in, but not limited to, Language Arts, Math and Science.”

For years, the district has presented the results of MCA tests to the board as a way to show student progress. However, the district told the board that it no longer feels that MCAs are an effective way to demonstrate student progress at the high school level.

Virgin told the board that switching to the ACT as a progress measurement for high schoolers “is in response to low participation in the MCA,” since less than one-third of students take the MCA.

Virgin said that the district believes that using the ACT instead of the MCA will enhance the accuracy and reliability of its standardized test data. About 80% of students choose to take the Pre-ACT as freshmen and sophomores, and about 90% of students take the ACT by the time they complete their senior year.

EP Schools Superintendent Josh Swanson said the district is one of the few in the area to provide the Pre-ACT free of charge to its students.

EP Schools also administers the ACT once to students for free on one designated date in the spring of their junior year, although they can also privately opt to take it multiple times for a fee.

Minnesota state law requires schools to offer students in grades 11 and 12 an opportunity to take a nationally recognized college entrance exam, namely the ACT or SAT, on a school day. Students who take these exams are not required to achieve a specified score on an assessment to graduate or meet graduation assessment requirements.

Although the ACT does not measure the same things in the same way as the MCA, it is also designed to evaluate skills and knowledge in reading, writing, math, and science. Virgin said this data can effectively inform instructional strategies, curriculum development, and support services tailored to student needs.

He said that the district’s goal was for 80% of the students who take these tests to meet or exceed their predicted growth from each year of the Pre-ACT to when they take the ACT.

The ACT is also one of three benchmarks the district uses to gauge whether students are academically prepared for post-secondary opportunities. Students are considered prepared if they achieve at least one of the following:

• Meet or exceed a college-readiness benchmark on a college entrance exam. Eden Prairie Schools and the ACT organization consider students to be academically prepared for post-secondary opportunities if they achieve a 21 composite score or greater on the ACT.
• Earn credit in a college-level course.
• Earn credit in a Capstone course through the Inspired Journey program.

While the switch from MCAs to ACTs at the high school level will capture 80% to 90% of students versus just 30%, it still leaves an estimated 10% to 20% of students who don’t take the tests out of the measurement data. In response to a board question about how the district could get to 100% participation, Virgin said it probably was not possible to reach that level for an external assessment.

“We removed every barrier under the sun for the ACT,” Virgin said. “It’s the most meaningful external assessment that there is in terms of its utility in other places. I can’t think of anything that we’re going to get more than a 90% participation rate in, unless we just want to look at internal assessments, which (are) our course grades.”

Swanson: MCAs are ‘not good data at this point’ for EPHS

Board member Charles “CJ” Strehl said that he thought using the ACT as the new metric made sense. However, he wanted to know whether since the MCAs would also still be administered at the high school, the high school data would still be presented to the school board along with the elementary and middle school results, as well as the ACT results.

Swanson said that he was happy to continue sharing high school MCA data, which is also publicly available. However, he expressed strong doubt about whether this would be meaningful to the board since so many students were opting out.

“Because it’s not good data at this point, it’s not necessarily reflective of what’s going on in the system,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point where it’s bad measurement.”

Swanson noted that the school still has “good participation” at the elementary and middle school levels, where the test is given to students in grades 3 through 8.

“It’s not an issue there,” Swanson said. “It’s only at the high school. And it has to do with what’s meaningful for students.”

Swanson explained that high school students are offered many standardized tests, including the MCAs, ACT, and AP tests. Students have to decide how to spend their time and resources, and they are more likely to focus on tests that have a direct impact on them.

In the case of ACTs, scores can help students be competitive in college admissions, whereas MCA results are perceived by many EPHS students to lack personal relevance or impact.

“They aren’t interested in a test that doesn’t mean anything to them,” Swanson said.