Maryland to release MCAP scores today, with a new statewide test on deck

When Maryland’s latest standardized test results are released on Tuesday, elementary and middle schools will be saying goodbye to the MCAP, the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program, a test that many educators quietly said was too hard and too long.

The next Maryland test in math and reading — to be called MSTAR for short — will be about 25% shorter. So next year, third through eighth graders will sit for three 40-minute sessions for math and three 70-minute sessions for English language arts. MCAP required four sessions for each subject.

The downside is that the state won’t have a reliable sense of whether student learning is improving or declining until it has two years of scores on the new test, in the spring of 2028.

The new test reflects changes to what’s being taught in public schools. State education leaders are tweaking English language arts standards to align with a phonics-based approach of teaching children to read, and rolling out significant changes to the way math is taught.

Maryland students have never done well on the current math test, with an average pass rate across all grades of 27% in 2025. That means that about two-thirds of students aren’t considered proficient in math.

To some degree this is because the MCAP math test — particularly the fourth grade test — is harder than nearly every other state’s test and harder than the National Assessment of Educational Progress at that grade level, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. States create their own standardized tests, which means there is some variation in their difficulty.

“We probably overshot on our expectations,” said Tim Guy, assistant state superintendent of assessment and accountability.

But this year won’t be the end of MCAP.

“It is not a clean break,” said Guy.

The state will transition to new social studies and science tests in the 2027-28 school year.

High school math tests won’t change until the 2028-29 school year, after schools switch to a new slate of math classes. Students will no longer learn algebra I, geometry and then algebra II. They’ll take a new sequence of classes that combines algebra, statistics and geometry into integrated algebra I and algebra II classes.

The change will need time to take hold before tests change, Guy said.

Students aren’t likely to experience the test very differently. While there will be a new app for the MSTAR, which stands for Maryland System of Testing Academic Readiness, the questions will be largely designed in the same way.

“The question types are similar,” Guy said.

Students will still be required to write responses on the English language arts exam as well, he said.

Some students may feel less frustrated during testing, which is done on a computer.

Guy said the newly designed test, which is still being built, adapts to a student’s level while they are taking the test. Currently, students get a smattering of questions at different levels and are scored on the difficulty of the ones they answer correctly. The MSTAR will feed a student who is faltering on early questions more questions on their level. Students who are flying through early questions will get more advanced questions earlier.

That should help school systems and families better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each student’s performance, Guy said.

Parents will be able to see their child’s results on the new test through an online portal by the end of June, the same time that results should be available to schools, he said.

The federal government requires states to test their students regularly, and Maryland’s program has gone through several iterations. The latest version of the test was supposed to begin in 2020 but was delayed by the pandemic.

School leaders have been critical of the state’s change in tests, saying that it is disruptive to learning and overall achievement.

MSTAR will be used for the next five years under a contract with a vendor, but the contract could be extended for another three years. So MSTAR could be in place for the next eight years.

Guy said that even if changes are made after that, Maryland can keep using portions of the test to reduce the sense that it’s radically different.

Check back later today for a searchable database of MCAP test scores.

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