In late June, education leaders across Minnesota quietly received student scores from the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). The public, however, didn’t see them until late August. That two-month gap — what I call “the space between” — isn’t just administrative delay. It’s where the narrative is shaped.
It’s the window where school districts frame “gains,” downplay disparities, and rehearse statements about how these tests are “just one data point.” But by the time families see those numbers, they’ve already been used to sort, rank, and redirect public schools and public perception.
And when you look at the numbers — especially for Black children — what emerges is not a mystery. It’s a pattern. A prediction. A system designed to do exactly what it does.
2025 results, same story
The latest 2024-25 MCA results, released to the public on Aug. 29, show that just 45.2% of students statewide are proficient in math. In reading, 49.6% met the mark. These numbers are largely unchanged from last year. And while state leaders noted slight improvements for Black, American Indian and multiracial students, the overall gaps remain stubborn and severe.
In some cases, Black students trail their white peers by more than 30 percentage points.
Yet this data isn’t being presented as a crisis. It’s being managed as business as usual.
Language that obscures
District officials are quick to say, “This is just one data point.” But that data point holds heavy weight: It determines school improvement plans, federal designations, and the reputations of schools serving Black, brown and immigrant students.
Worse, the way we talk about these results blames students without naming systems. We speak of “gaps” as though they’re naturally occurring, not designed. We say “students are behind,” but never ask: Behind what? Behind whom? And why is the line always moving?
Predictable harm is still harm
Princeton Prof. Ruha Benjamin calls this kind of design the “New Jim Code” — a term for how tech and data systems appear neutral but actually encode old patterns of racial harm.
That’s exactly what we see here. Standardized tests are marketed as objective tools, but they embed cultural and linguistic bias. Then they are used to evaluate children and educators without interrogating the structure itself.
We don’t need more disaggregated charts to prove this. We need the moral courage to ask why we continue to reproduce harm that we’ve already predicted.
From data surveillance to public accountability
What if we stopped pretending the numbers were neutral?
What if we used MCA scores not to punish schools, label children, or justify funding cuts — but to name what’s broken? What if the data wasn’t just collected, but confronted?
That would mean asking real questions about why some students are always described as “falling behind” while the system that produces those results is never held responsible. It would mean ending the silent agreements that let test scores double as tools of control.
If the harm is predictable, then the responsibility is not just technical — it’s moral.
We already know what these tests reveal. The question now is: What will we do with the truth?
