Dear Families,

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) annually administers statewide assessments. They are designed to provide the state, districts, and schools with a snapshot of student progress towards meeting the Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards.

MDE is aware of the concerns about the impact of the pandemic on learning, and is expecting student results to look different from previous years. When the assessment is administered correctly, the scores will still represent an accurate snapshot of student learning of the grade-level content standards or proficiency in academic English at the time students test.

Districts and charter schools can use the results as an additional measure to evaluate their curriculum.

Your school can provide more specific information about the health and safety measures they are taking to ensure students and staff stay safe and healthy during testing. If your student is in distance learning and you do not want your student to go in to the school to test because of concerns for health and safety related to COVID-19, you can choose for your student to not take the test. If you do not want your student to participate, let your school know.

Contact your school for more information about their health and safety procedures during testing, and how these test scores will be used. You can also find additional information, in several languages, on the MDE website about this year’s test administration (from the MDE home page, select COVID-19, then in the left-hand menu, select Student Instruction COVID-19 Resources > Assessing Learning).