Colorado’s preliminary school assessment results show a promising return to pre-pandemic achievement, though participation lags behind

Students in Colorado are performing better on their exams than last year, with some grades surpassing 2019 scores after major setbacks created by the pandemic, but education leaders still worry about low participation.

The Colorado Department of Education released preliminary assessment results for the Colorado Measures of Academic Success and PSAT/SAT tests on Wednesday, showing mostly positive results.

Overall, nearly all grades reported higher scores on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success tests compared to last year. Except for fourth-grade English Language Arts and eighth-grade English and math, all grades surpassed their pre-pandemic scores.

“One thing that is encouraging to look at here is that this year … we’re actually a little bit higher than we were in previous years,” Christina Wirth-Hawkins, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education, said in Wednesday’s state board of education meeting. “We’re not where we were pre-pandemic — we are seeing a little bit of a jump.”

Math was one of the content areas that was “hit pretty hard” during the pandemic, during which several grade levels saw a noticeable drop in performance in 2021. This year, after targeted efforts from districts to bring math scores back up, nearly all grade levels saw improvements.

Fourth grade saw the biggest improvement of 2.4 percentage points, while all middle school results increased by at least two percentage points compared to 2024 results.

“It’s still lower than we would like. We want more of our students to be meeting or exceeding expectations,” Wirth-Hawkins said. “(But) we see that across the board, we are higher than we were pre-pandemic, and so we’re really at a new baseline.”

Despite the steady growth, most grade levels still have less than 40% of students meeting expectations in math. Sixth grade had the lowest scores at 31.4%, despite improving by 2.2 percentage points. Fifth grade showed slightly slower growth than the other grade levels.

“If you look at grade 5 … this is a cohort of students who were in kindergarten at the onset of the pandemic, so we know that they’ve experienced a lot of disruptive learning throughout their initial years of education,” Wirth-Hawkins said. “They’ve improved consistently by different amounts.”

While all except one grade saw improvement in English language arts, seventh grade saw the highest growth at 2.5%. Eighth-grade science scores improved by 4.2 percentage points from last year.

“There’s still work to do, but we want to see that growth each year, and that’s what we’re seeing,” she said.

A new baseline for SAT scores

SAT results for 11th-grade students saw growth in both reading and writing and math compared to last year. Ninth-grade PSAT scores remained steady in reading and writing but declined in math, while 10th-grade PSAT scores increased in math and decreased in reading and writing.

All PSAT/SAT scores were lower than 2019 pre-pandemic figures, though Wirth-Hawkins said that the six-year comparison is no longer accurate.

Last year, the board unanimously voted to temporarily lower the SAT math score required for high school graduation. The decision was based on the College Board of Education’s nationwide transition to the Digital SAT in 2024, which was formerly administered on paper and was credited for a statewide dip in math scores as students adjusted to a new medium and updated content.

Wirth-Hawkins said the district considers 2024 its new baseline, since looking at pre-pandemic numbers for an updated test would no longer be an accurate comparison.

An underwhelming year for participation

Contrary to actual test scores, participation still lagged behind pre-pandemic levels in 2025. For the Colorado Measures of Academic Success exams, the majority of elementary grades saw between 91% and 94% participation. Grades six to eight lingered between 80% and 89%.

No grade levels managed to reach the district’s 95% threshold for full participation, which can bring up concerns about the data’s accuracy.

“If we go back to 2019, you see pre-pandemic, that’s where we have our highest participation,” Wirth-Hawkins said. “From there, in the immediate years following, we have our lowest participation, and we’ve been kind of finding our way back up but we’re still not there.”

The science portion of the tests, taken by grades five, eight and 11, saw the worst participation from older students, with only 51.8% of 11th graders completing the test.

“I think we see a progression as students get older about which assessments they see as most relevant to them,” Wirth-Hawkins said. “It’s something that, if they are not inclined to take it, they’re more likely to ask their parent to opt them out. They might be more likely to just not show up.”

The same grade had a much higher participation on the SAT — over 86% — mainly due to its tie to college admissions.

Families can now access their students’ CMAS scores directly through the Family Score Report Portal. Preliminary results include limited data. More information about statewide disaggregated

achievement and growth results, including district and school-level public results, will be presented at the August State Board of Education meeting. 

“We don’t yet have information about how different student groups performed, which has historically been an area of concern for Colorado,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said in a release.