Missouri MAP Results: 2024 Edition
By Courtney Vahle, Ed.D.
Scores on the Missouri MAP test are effectively flat from 2023 to 2024. Math scores have mostly returned to pre-pandemic levels. ELA scores have yet to recover, especially at the early grades, which remain at 2021 levels. This reflects a larger trend of declining early literacy rates.
This brief is a PRiME Center rapid analysis, released the same day as the Missouri MAP score results.
Key Points:
In math, 2024’s MAP scores surpassed or sustained 2023’s scores in 4th–8th grades.
Average 4th grade and middle school mathematics scores have completely “recovered” from pandemic-era lows, while 3rd and 5th grade scores remain, on average, five scale score points lower in 2024 than in 2018.
All grades had math proficiency rates that increased or remained steady from 2023 to 2024. However, proficiency rates remain well below 50% in all grades as they have been since 2018.
ELA scale scores are effectively unchanged from 2023–2024, and remain three to eight points lower than pre-pandemic levels. This Missouri data reflects more widespread national trends that show a decline in early literacy.
Grades 4 and 7 saw slight improvement in ELA proficiency rates from 2023 to 2024. However, we see fewer than 50% of students scoring proficient or advanced in ELA in any grade, mirroring the mathematics proficiency rates. Only 38% of fifth and sixth-graders scored proficient or advanced on the ELA assessment.
DESE has recently switched to reporting Direct Certification data in addition to information about the percentage of students receiving Free or Reduced-Price lunch. When used as a proxy measure for socioeconomic status, it allows us to provide extended and more accurate insights into the effects of socioeconomic status on student performance.
Students who are eligible for Direct Certification are proficient at about half the rate of those ineligible across all grades and content areas.
The socioeconomic proficiency gap remains steady, showing no signs of widening, but also no signs of closing.
Studies continue to show that socioeconomic status is a significant predictor of school performance, and the gap between FRL-ineligible and DC-ineligible student performance indicates that it isn’t an individual issue, but also a school-wide resource issue.
Math MAP Performance in 2024 Mostly Surpassed or Sustained 2023 Scores
Please Cite As: Vahle, C. (2024, November). Missouri MAP Scores: 2024 Edition. Policy Research in Missouri Education, 6(10). Saint Louis University. https://www.primecenter.org/policy-brief-database/map-2024