Arizona Department of Education Releases State-Wide AzMerit Test Results

A new report from the Arizona Dept. of Education has released a report ranking Arizona school’s AzMerit scores.

The report is intended to be an educational resource to help the public learn more about how Arizona students are doing in school.

The ADE report reveals the final combined performance results from the Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 administrations of AzMERIT testing.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, Kathy Hoffman says that scores have improved in 13 of the 22 grade-level and test categories.

The results include the total percentage of Arizona public school students who passed the assessments and the percentage at each performance level.

“I am very proud of the hard work my Assessment and Accountability teams have done in incorporating AzMERIT data with the rest of the Menu of Assessments data into the scores this year,” Hoffman said. “I am also pleased to announce that our students have improved in 13 of the 22 grade-level and test categories. While assessment scores can always be increased, I would like to extend my congratulations to all of our educators and students for their improvement.”

Stefan Swiat from the Arizona Department of Education says the tests are designed to be hard to hold schools accountable. He added that good teachers can make all the difference in a child’s education.

“If you were interviewing our chief accountability officer right now, she would be over the moon excited about that 1% and yes it’s not flashy it’s not a headline grabber. But amongst education wonks, it does show some decent improvement,” said Swiat.

Although there was an increase from last year’s scores, more than half of Arizona students who took the AzMerit still failed in both math and reading categories.

“If you look at other states, most states are below 50% when it comes to proficiently in these areas. We are ahead of Colorado, we are ahead of New Mexico,” said Swiat.

Arizona public school students in third grade through high school take the AzMERIT test or either the SAT or ACT. Students in grades third through eight take an assessment in English language arts (ELA) and math at their grade level. Students taking high school level English and math take End-of-Course assessments that test their proficiency in those subjects.

Click here to see how your child’s school fared in the AzMerit test.