Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy.
The percentage of third graders who met or exceeded proficiency in reading in the Detroit school district last spring reached an 11-year high, newly released state standardized test results show.
The results of the 2024-25 Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, or M-STEP, provide a glimpse of how the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s efforts to improve literacy, including its plan to invest millions in “right to read” lawsuit settlement money, is making an impact. Much of the investment included hiring hundreds of academic interventionists to work one-on-one or in small groups with students in the early grades.
In addition to improving reading proficiency in early grades, nearly every grade in DPSCD had higher proficiency rates in math and English language arts, or ELA, on the M-STEP since the exam was first administered in 2014-15. The only exception was in third grade math, which was nearly the same proficiency rate it was in 2018-19.
“The results for Detroit are pretty encouraging and stand out quite a bit from statewide trends,” said Tara Kilbride, assistant director for research at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative.
Just half of the school-age children who live in Detroit attend district schools. Most of the rest attend charter schools in the city, suburban charters and district schools, or private schools.
A Chalkbeat analysis of M-STEP results for Detroit students found similar rates of overall proficiency in DPSCD, city charters, as well as suburban charter schools located in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb County where Detroit students make up more than half of the enrollment.
In math, 12.3% of DPSCD students and 12.7% of students in city charters were proficient or advanced last school year.. For students in suburban charter schools that were part of the analysis, 9.1% were at or above proficient.
In Detroit charter schools, overall reading proficiency was 5 percentage points higher than in DPSCD. For suburban charter school students, 16.2% were proficient or advanced.
The year-over-year changes in growth in both math and reading were about the same in city charters and in DPSCD. Suburban charter schools also saw growth in proficiency compared to the previous year, though the percentage point increases were slightly smaller than for schools in the city.
Kilbride said the similarities in the year-over-year growth could indicate “whatever is working in Detroit might be working in the city in general.”
Statewide, proficiency rates on the M-STEP are still lower compared to the years before COVID in all subject areas and grades except eighth grade English language arts.
“Last year we once again showed more improvement than the state average and we only represent 3.5% of that statewide average which means that we are doing something differently and better to raise student achievement than most school districts in Michigan,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told Chalkbeat in an email Wednesday.
LaTrice McClendon, a DPSCD board member, said the district will continue to build on its literacy plan this school year, but did not give any details on what that will look like.
“The school board has set ambitious student achievement goals through our updated 2027 strategic plan, and we look forward to continuing the process of problem solving with the superintendent on how to reach those goals while holding him accountable to their obtainment as well,” she said.
Though there has been steady incremental improvement across all grade levels in most subject areas in the Detroit school district, it still falls far behind statewide averages. For example, an average of nearly 39% of all Michigan third graders were proficient or above in reading, while the rate was just under 13% in DPSCD.
Jeremy Singer, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Wayne State University, said the Detroit school district “deserves a lot of credit for investing thoughtfully,” because research shows there is a direct link between poverty and proficiency rates.
Students in Detroit face more systemic challenges than others in the state, such as poverty, high rates of chronic absenteeism, more frequently moving to new schools, and historically inequitable funding.
Michigan public school students in grades 3 through 7 take the M-STEP in English language arts and math each spring. In fifth grade, students also take the M-STEP in science and social studies. The PSAT is given to eighth graders in English language arts and math, and the SAT is given to 11th graders in the same subjects.
In the 2019-20 school year, the exams were not given to students due to disruptions from school closures during the pandemic. The tests were optional in the 2020-21 school year.
Students considered ‘at-risk’ continue to struggle to catch up
Though on average, the Detroit district has improved proficiency rates, Kilbride said there is more variation in the levels of student achievement since the pandemic, meaning there are bigger gaps between the highest and lowest performing students. The same is true across the state.
Peri Stone-Palmquist, co-executive director of the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, said more families are experiencing homelessness and financial distress than before the pandemic.
“It’s great that these scores are a slight increase, but I think we got work to do,” she said.
A lower percentage of English learners were at or above proficiency in English language arts in DPSCD compared to the previous year, a decrease of 2 percentage points.
There were, however, big increases in proficiency rates for English learners in math, science, and social studies compared to the 2023-24 school year.
The same was true for students with disabilities, with a small decline in English language arts proficiency and increases in the other subject areas.
Some key takeaways from the data
Overall, 15.4% of district students in grades 3-8 were proficient or above in English language arts in 2024-25, an increase of 1.53 percentage points compared to the previous year.
In math, 12.3% of all district students in grades 3-8 were proficient or above, which represents an increase of 1.3 percentage points from 2023-24.
Vitti said on Wednesday the district must “stay focused and disciplined” to accelerate academic improvements.
“One of the best ways to accomplish that goal is to improve student attendance,” he said.
In the 2024-25 school year, more than 60% of DPSCD students were chronically absent, Vitti said at a recent board meeting.
“The DPSCD blueprint for student achievement improvement is verified; we just need to continue refining it while ensuring more students attend school consistently, this will lead to greater acceleration of the progress we are seeing,” said Vitti.
The district’s progress is an example of a targeted investment working to improve literacy and chronic absenteeism rates, said Imani Foster, of 482 Forward, a local nonprofit focused on educational equity. She added that the district still has a “long way to go.”
“We’re not funding our schools enough,” she said. “We need to be able to pay teachers adequately, we need to be able to train them adequately, we need to be able to update all our technology.”
The district’s efforts to improve literacy continue
Last school year, the district began a three-year plan for investing $94.4 million in “right to read” lawsuit settlement money to boost early literacy.
The plan included hiring more than 200 academic interventionists to work with K-4 students one-on-one and in small groups last year.
At the district’s July board meeting, Vitti said the investment in intervention is working. The district’s diagnostic test results showed 34% of kindergarteners were at or above grade level, nearly four percentage points higher compared to the previous year, the superintendent said.
The plan for the settlement money also included reducing K-3 class size, hiring one multilingual academic interventionist for every 42 English learners, and offering more reading materials for kids to take home, among other measures.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.
Micah Walker is a reporter covering arts and culture and education for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.
