Let me start where this article is not going. Not one number below is a teacher's fault. I've watched Minnesota educators buy their own classroom supplies and stay past dark for kids who aren't theirs. This is a story about systems, curriculum decisions, and a state that took too long to follow the evidence — and about the fact that Minnesota has finally started to.
Now the numbers.
Where we actually stand
On Minnesota's own state tests in 2025: 49.5 percent of students proficient in reading, 45.0 percent in math — both roughly ten points below where the state stood in 2019. The single most important number in the set is third-grade reading, because third grade is when children stop learning to read and start reading to learn. Minnesota's third-grade reading proficiency: 55.7 percent in 2018 → 45.9 percent in 2025, a fourth consecutive annual decline. More than half of our third graders are not reading at grade level.
The national test tells the same story with more precision. On the 2024 NAEP, Minnesota's fourth-grade reading score was statistically identical to the national average — for a state that spent decades in the top tier. Thirty-nine percent of Minnesota fourth graders scored below NAEP Basic in reading, up from 33 percent in 1998. Our eighth-grade math is still above the national average at 282, but below Minnesota's own 2000 score of 287.
And the gaps are the part that should end every complacent conversation in this state. In fourth-grade math, economically disadvantaged students score 26 points below their classmates; in eighth-grade math the income gap is 29 points — statistically wider than the 20-point gap in 2000. Black students average 34 points below white students in eighth-grade math; 11 percent are proficient, against 42 percent of white students. Minnesota has been talking about closing these gaps my entire adult life. On this measure, by this state's own data, the gap got worse.
One more system-level number: about one in four Minnesota students was chronically absent in 2023–24 (24.5 percent by the Report Card measure, up from roughly 14 percent pre-pandemic), rising to a third among low-income, Black, Hispanic, and special-education students. No curriculum works on an empty desk.
The economics — why this is a jobs story
The link between skills and paychecks isn't ideology, it's measurement. Research using international adult-skills data found that a one-standard-deviation gain in numeracy is associated with an 18 percent wage increase across 22 countries — and 28 percent in the United States, the largest effect measured anywhere. And the Annie E. Casey Foundation's landmark study found children who aren't reading proficiently in third grade are four times more likelier not to graduate on time; for low-income students who also read below basic, roughly one in four never finishes.
Now put that beside the workforce math from earlier in this series: a labor force projected to add only about 43,000 workers this decade, and employers reporting nearly two openings for every job seeker. The Minnesota Chamber's own benchmark report puts it bluntly — Minnesota ranks 49th in high schools offering computer science and 44th in college graduates earning STEM degrees. A reading gap in 2026 is a labor shortage in 2040. It's also, plainly, a fairness problem: a kid who can't read the fine print grows into an adult who signs it anyway. I've built a career on what happens to those adults.
Two honest complications. Minnesota's four-year graduation rate hit a record 85 percent for the class of 2025 — genuinely good news, and hard to square with 49 percent proficiency; both facts are real and the state owes parents an explanation of how. And spending is not the whole story: Minnesota spent $16,117 per pupil in fiscal 2023 — 22nd in the nation, just under the U.S. average of $16,526 — after an 18 percent nominal increase since 2020, while proficiency fell. That doesn't prove money doesn't matter. It proves money without the right method doesn't buy results.
The proof that this is fixable: Mississippi
In 2013, Mississippi ranked 49th of 50 in fourth-grade reading, scoring 209 against a national average of 221. The state passed a literacy law built on the science of reading: phonics-based instruction, retraining every K–3 teacher, literacy coaches placed in schools, and intensive support tied to a third-grade reading gate.
By the 2024 NAEP, Mississippi's fourth graders scored 219 — five points above the national average, and five points above Minnesota's 214. They went from 49th to 9th. On demographically adjusted comparisons, Mississippi's fourth graders now rank first in the country. This is a state that spends far less per pupil than we do.
The honest caveats belong here too: researchers note that comprehensive early-literacy policies elsewhere produced smaller 4–5 point gains, so Mississippi's retention policy and other factors likely contribute; and Mississippi's eighth-grade reading has not shown the same gains, a pattern critics call "the fade." Fine. Take the caveats and the ten-point gain together — the lesson stands: teaching reading the way the cognitive science says to teach it moves the needle, in a poor state, in a decade.
Minnesota already passed the law. Now comes the part that matters.
The good news most Minnesotans missed: Minnesota adopted essentially that playbook in the READ Act of 2023 — universal K–3 screening three times a year, evidence-based structured-literacy curriculum, progress monitoring with parent notification, a literacy lead in every district, and mandatory structured-literacy training for K–3, special-education, and intervention teachers, with a July 1, 2026 training deadline (grades 4–12 by 2027). The Legislature backed it with roughly $35 million for curriculum, $35 million for professional development, a regional literacy network across the nine service cooperatives, and about $42 million a year in literacy aid.
The state's education department says reading gains "couldn't be expected yet," because results should appear as students move through grades with fully trained teachers. That is a reasonable position — and it is also a testable promise with a date attached. The training deadline passed two months ago. So the questions every parent, legislator, and reporter should be asking this fall are simple: How many teachers actually completed the training? Which districts are behind? What did the screening data show, and what changed for the kids it flagged? The law requires districts to file local literacy plans and MDE to report to the Legislature — those documents should be on the front page of every district website, not buried in a state file cabinet.
Because the early evidence in Minnesota is genuinely promising where implementation is real. Marshall Public Schools trained roughly a hundred staff and rebuilt instruction around phonics; sixth-grade reading proficiency went from 41 to 50.6 percent in a year, and its eighth graders posted 58.4 percent in math against a state average of 41.9. On attendance, Northfield cut high-school chronic absenteeism from 23.5 percent to 13.7 percent in a single year with unglamorous blocking and tackling: centralized attendance tracking, letters after eight absences, and actual conversations about root causes. Rochester's restorative-justice truancy pilot improved attendance for 58 percent of participants. None of that required a miracle. It required someone to own the number.
What we can do
Publish the implementation scorecard — teacher-training completion by district, screening results, and intervention outcomes — annually and in plain English, the way we'd expect of any organization spending nine figures. Fund the coaching, not just the mandate: Mississippi's coaches in buildings were the active ingredient, and Minnesota's regional literacy network is the equivalent. Treat attendance as a measurable, solvable operations problem, because Northfield just proved it is. And hold the line on the standard itself: no more curriculum purchased because a vendor was persuasive, only because the evidence is there.
Minnesota has the law, the money, the teachers, and now a decade of proof from a state we out-spend two to one. What's left is follow-through — the least glamorous and most decisive thing government ever does. Our kids get exactly one shot at third grade.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment results, 2019–2025, from Minnesota Department of Education data as reported across multiple independent carriers (Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Patch, Marshall Independent, Center of the American Experiment — an advocacy outlet, cited only as a carrier of MDE figures); NCES 2024 NAEP State Snapshot Reports for Minnesota, grades 4 and 8, reading and mathematics (primary PDFs), and the corresponding 2013 and 2024 Mississippi reading snapshots; Mississippi ranking and gains per NCES snapshots and the governor's Jan. 29, 2025 statement, with researcher caveats per Chalkbeat (July 18, 2023) and subsequent "fade" critiques; READ Act provisions per Minn. Stat. § 120B.123 and appropriations per 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 55, art. 3, and 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 115, all verified at revisor.mn.gov; MDE READ Act implementation guidance; chronic-absence figures from MDE Report Card data and the Minnesota Student Attendance Pilot Report to the Legislature (July 1, 2026), which also supplies the Northfield and Rochester results; Hanushek, Schwerdt, Wiederhold & Woessmann, "Returns to Skills around the World" (NBER WP 19762, 2013; European Economic Review 2015); Hernandez, "Double Jeopardy" (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011); Minnesota graduation rates per MPR News (Apr. 3, 2026) and the state's 2024 announcement; per-pupil spending from the U.S. Census Bureau 2023 Annual Survey of School System Finances; Minnesota Chamber of Commerce 2026 Business Benchmarks; Marshall Public Schools results per the Marshall Independent (Sept. 4, 2025); Education Minnesota's framing of the NAEP results (Jan. 2025) included for balance.
2026 state test results had not been released as of publication; figures above are 2025. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.