Any of the following would be perfectly accurate and appropriate headlines for testing data released August 19 from the Colorado Measures of Academic Success:
“Most students grades 3–8 behind in all subjects according to state testing.”
“State testing shows overall low student scores increase in just over half of categories by grade and subject.”
“Nearly two-thirds of Colorado students struggle in math despite small testing gains.”
“Large majority of Black and Hispanic students continue to struggle in language and math.”
Here is an actual headline from the Denver Post that’s reasonable: “2026 CMAS results show Colorado students making gains in math, falling behind in reading.”
A comparable headline from Chalkbeat, posted May 29 based on preliminary data, reads: “Student math proficiency rises but literacy results are mixed, preliminary Colorado test scores show.”
Headlines that indicate the base level of performance, rather than small year-to-year changes, are more revealing. Compare: If your student told you his report card showed gains in most classes, you would not be satisfied with that level of information. If the student still was earning straight Fs, only some of the Fs reflected slight improvement (a little closer to Ds), you probably would react, “Fs are terrible,” not “Hurray for the marginal gains!”
But the Colorado Department of Education is interested in putting the most positive spin possible on terrible results. Its August 19 media release carries the headline, “Colorado student achievement and growth results show continued progress, with mathematics and elementary literacy leading gains.”
I guess that’s one way to spin widespread failure. However, the state’s bullshit factory will not help Colorado students succeed in college or in the workforce.
A glance at actual results
If you go to the results page you can download the spreadsheet data. Let’s peek at how Colorado students actually are doing on these tests.
Here’s the fraction of students overall who meet or exceed expectations in English: grade 3, 40.8%; grade 4, 47%, grade 5, 49.9%, grade 6, 41.6%, grade 7, 46.6%, grade 8, 42.2%.
Here are the results in math: grade 3, 41.5%, grade 4, 39%, grade 5, 39.3%, grade 6, 32.7%, grade 7, 32.9%, grade 8, 37.8%.
If that’s not enough to horrify you, here are the results specifically for black and Hispanic students in English: grade 3, black 25.6%, Hispanic 24.1%; grade 4, black 29.8%, Hispanic 29.1%; grade 5, black 33.9%, Hispanic 31.7%; grade 6, black 26%, Hispanic 22.5%, grade 7, black 34%, Hispanic 28.5%; grade 8, black 29.4%, Hispanic 23.9%.
And here are the results for black and Hispanic kids in math: grade 3, black 25.8%, Hispanic 24%; grade 4, black 22%, Hispanic 20.8%; grade 5, black 21.6%, Hispanic 21%; grade 6, black 17.6%, Hispanic 15.5%; grade 7, black 19%, Hispanic 15.4%; grade 8, black 23.6%, Hispanic 19.2%.
By the way, results in science and social studies remain absolutely in the toilet. But, hey, at least the legislature scaled back social-studies testing so we won’t have to remind ourselves as strongly of how little Colorado students are learning about that. Who needs to know about American democratic institutions, anyway.
Anyone who would brag over these results has little capacity for common sense and less capacity for shame.
Gazette and Denver schools win spin award
The award for most outrageous spin goes to the Denver Gazette, where this headline sits atop an article by Nicole Brambila: “Colorado math scores hit record high as Denver-area districts show gains.”
Yes, it’s true: 37.3% of Colorado students in these grades meeting or exceeding expectations in math is a “record high.”
I hasten to point out that Brambila does offer relevant context (and anyway reporters rarely write their own headlines): “Despite the gains, only slightly above a third of students are meeting or exceeding math expectations and less than half are doing the same in English.”
Meanwhile, here is the DPS headline for Superintendent Alex Marrero’s August 29 release: “Celebrating Districtwide Academic Gains in 2025–26.” Marrero begins, “It is with great joy that I share Denver Public Schools’ strong year-end academic performance gains across READ Act (early literacy), CMAS and COSAT/PSAT assessments for the 2025-26 school year.”
Let’s dig into the numbers that fill Marrero with such “great joy.”
Marrero states, “Across the district on READ Act assessments, 69% of K-3 students were at Grade Level & Above.” This is a peculiar statement because READ tests are given to check students for reading deficiencies and problems such as dyslexia, not to test overall language competency.
As CDE explains, “The main purpose of K-3 assessments in the Colorado READ Act is to identify students who have a significant reading deficiency and to screen for characteristics of dyslexia in grades K-3.”
The purpose of the CMAS, on the other hand, is to see if students meet competencies outlined by the state. True, as Marrero says, Denver students have improved somewhat in some categories, but that’s relative to low baseline performance. For example, Marrero’s release states, “Math Proficiency Gains: 35% of overall Math scores Met or Exceeded Expectations, a 2 percentage point improvement from last year.” Maybe 65% of students not meeting expectations is not quite so joyous?
If you pull up the spreadsheet for district-level data, you find that, among DPS students for all relevant grades, 26.6% of black students and 25.1% of Hispanic students met or exceeded expectations in English, while 19.9% of black students and 18.6% of Hispanic students did so in math.
And, to reiterate, Marrero is overjoyed with these abysmal results.
The nuances of the CDE release
True, after bragging about “continued progress,” “gains,” “improved achievement,” “meaningful academic progress,” and “encouraging progress,” and right before quoting Governor Jared Polis’s meaningless claim that “Colorado is No. 1 in education,” CDE concedes problems of “persistent achievement gaps, declines in middle school English language arts and limited improvement in science.”
CDE also quotes Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova, who, after praising “gains,” admits “we have much more work to do.” Understatement of the year. She continued, “Too many students are still not meeting grade-level expectations, and longstanding gaps remain far too wide.”
The brightest spot in the testing results, if you squint really hard, is for the PSAT/SAT reading and writing test, which shows around two-thirds meeting or exceeding expectations. Meanwhile, even on this highly delimited test, most students are doing poorly in math.
It’s not as though Colorado students suddenly become literary geniuses in the summer between eighth and ninth grade. Rather, what explains the relative high marks are Colorado’s low standards. Colorado considers an SAT language score of 480 as meeting expectations. Sure, if you set your expectations low enough, more people can meet them. (Note: Colorado also uses a score of 470 in its “Graduation Guidelines.”)
True, the College Board (publisher of the SAT) says, “Students with an SAT Reading and Writing section score that meets or exceeds the benchmark [a 480] have a 75% chance of earning at least a C in first-semester, credit-bearing college courses in history, literature, social sciences, or writing.”
But there is a huge difference between a 480 and (say) a 600. You get a 200 even if you miss every question. A 480 is about the 41st percentile; a 600 is the 79th percentile. So combining students with a 480 and students with substantially higher scores is meaningless. Another way of putting the point is, “Students who reach only the minimum threshold likely will be mediocre college students if they don’t flunk out altogether.” You can cheer that result if you want, I guess.
A useful comparison comes from the 2024 8th-grade reading results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which show 26% of students below basic performance, 39% at basic, 31% at proficient, and 4% at advanced, where “basic” is defined as “partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at a given grade.”
We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that a fraction of students are doing quite well academically. But that fraction is depressingly small, and it is smaller still for minority kids.
Anyone who actually cares about the education of Colorado students will take the latest test results for what they are: a flashing red siren screaming emergency.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
