***Special Note:  K-5 teachers will continue to teach and assess with 2010 MN Academic Standards in English Language Arts until the end of SY 2024-2025

***ELA Standards Implementation Delay--SPRING 2026

Minnesota school district leaders received the following information on Friday, April 2, 2021:

To provide flexibility for districts in implementing new standards as the state emerges from COVID-19, MDE will be delaying the required implementation of the Science and the English Language Arts standards to the 2024–25 and 2025–26 school years, respectively. Implementation dates for each content area are set as part of the rulemaking process to allow flexibility for implementation needs. With both of these two content areas still in the rulemaking process, MDE will use that opportunity to update the proposed rule language to reflect the new implementation date. Since the MCAs are based on the standards, the Science MCA-IV will be delayed until the spring of 2025 for grades 5, 8, and high school, and the Reading MCA-IV will be delayed until the spring of 2026 for grades 3–8 and 10. Although districts are not required to begin work to implement the standards, MDE will continue to engage in test specifications and development to be prepared for the MCA-IVs in spring of 2025 and 2026. 

What is the Minnesota Questions Tool (MQT)?

The Minnesota Questions Tool (MQT) provides access to the released questions from past MCAs (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments) in math and reading across all grade levels. The MQT includes released items for Science MCA IV in grades 5, 8, and HS.

Users can search questions by standard, benchmark, and grade; read rationales for correct/incorrect answers; review student performance data; and download questions for use in planning classroom assessments and instruction.

The questions in the MQT are provided as

• examples of questions that probe students’ knowledge and skills of a specific content area in different ways

• a way to see how our students have performed on the question

These questions are not intended to be used as practice tests for future MCA assessments. 

How are MQT Questions Used?

The MQT questions are intended to support educators:

• in understanding how the academic standards are assessed on the MCA, 

• to help identify student misconceptions,

• and to provide examples of questions that assess student understanding at different DOK (Depth of Knowledge) levels.

What does Percent Correct mean?

The data in the MQT shows the percentage of students who answered a particular question correctly and the percentage of students who selected each incorrect option.

What are the Question Rationales?

Each test question in the MQT includes a rationale, which provides justification for the correct answer and explains why all other options are incorrect. Additionally, the incorrect option rationales explain why the student may have decided to select the incorrect answer. This can be helpful for identifying student misconceptions. For example, if many students chose an incorrect option, it may be useful to closely review the incorrect options and their rationales to identify why students were led to the incorrect option. This information can be used to help teachers address the misconception when planning for classroom instruction, or the question can be shown as an example to students.