I am incredibly hopeful that we are turning this trend around.”

School Board member Carrie Tate

While structural issues like declining birthrates and aging population can drastically affect long-term trends within schools across the country, district-specific variables like graduation rates, test scores, and increased competition from other schools can drive families to and from districts.
This article will contextualize district-specific factors, how they align with falling enrollment, and therefore might be affecting enrollment as well as highlight some the changes made within the district in an effort to counteract that trend.
Test Scores
A common metric used to compare school districts is test scores on standardized tests.
In Minnesota, Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, better known as MCAs, are a common benchmark. These scores theoretically allow parents and educators alike to compare one school to another.
“I do think a lot of parents rely on MCA data and provided report cards that are out there,” when comparing and selecting a school district, said ISD 200 Director of Teaching and Learning Andrew Hodges.
While he personally would like to examine schools more deeply by scrutinizing curriculum, measurements for achievement and how districts work with students who are falling behind, many times parents use topline data like the MCA scores of the Minnesota Report Card provided by the Minnesota Department of Education.
It is relatively easy to find MCA test scores for the current year and compare those to other districts. The comparison of school districts to themselves over time, however, is difficult when using MCAs, said Hodges.
“We don’t have across-the-state common tools that schools utilize to actually track data,” said Hodges.
While many school internally track a number of metrics, they are not standardized across the state which can made deeper comparisons between schools difficult.
Even beyond comparing school districts, gleaming how school test scores have changed over time can be difficult in part simply because the tests have changed.
Since their creation, the MCA test has been updated a number of times across reading, science and math. Currently the state is rolling out the MCA IV, the fourth version of the test.
Tests change due to changes in academic standards. New standards require new tests.
“As new academic standards are adopted and implemented every 10 years, new assessments are developed to assess those standards,” according to the Minnesota Department of Education in an introduction to the MCA IV.
Because standards over time have gotten higher for students, the MCAs have gotten more difficult so comparing the test scores of the MCA II to the MCA III isn’t necessarily comparing apples to apples.
“The MCA is only going to get harder as the MCA IVs come out,” said Hodges.
While the changing test standards can make self-evaluation over time difficult for school districts, the MCA Reading test isn’t a bad metric to attempt to do that, said Hodges.
While standards have shifted for science and math through levels of depths of knowledge, the reading test has oftentimes simply shifted earlier: “if it’s reading class, some of the biggest changes are sometimes we say, what you used to have to do in first grade, you now do in kindergarten [...] We’re changing small stuff,” said Hodges.
So how then, given that metric, are Hastings Reading MCA scores?
The final MCA taken by students is in 10th grade. This final test generally showcases the highest scores for the district.
ISD 200 reading MCA scores for 10th grade beat out statewide averages but have lagged since the pandemic.
Broadly, Hastings test scores showcase the seesawing levels of proficiency that come with each new test. Proficiency rises generally over the years for each new test, then fall again as the standards change and become more difficult.
For example, in the final year of the MCA II for reading in 2012, 82.7% of Hastings 10th graders met or exceeded the standards, according to fiscal year 2012 assessment results data. The very next year in 2013, the first year of the MCA III, only 66% of Hastings 10th graders met or exceeded the standards.
The nearly 20% decline between test scores in 2012-2013 doesn’t necessarily reflect a drop in student learning nor staff teaching, but the new standards of the MCA III.
Five years later in 2018, proficiency scores for meeting and exceeding standards had risen to 71% in ISD 200 10th graders.
State trends during time also reflect this drop between tests with statewide averages for 10th grade reading dropping by more than 14% from 2012-2013 from 76.8% to 62.4%.
Even with this fluctuating proficiency, Hastings 10th graders scored higher on the MCA III reading test than statewide averages by a margin of 3-12% between 2012 and 2018.
Recent test scores for ISD 200 dropped during the pandemic, even falling below statewide averages and haven’t recovered since.
One metric that lines up neatly with enrollment is that of 2012 where the district posted its highest level of students meeting or exceeding state reading standards as well as its lowest decline in average daily enrollment (ADM) in the past 15 years.
Similarly, the lowest pre-pandemic MCA 10th grade reading test score in 2015 aligns with demographic factors discussed last week. In the three years after 2015, Hastings 10th grade MCA reading scores rose by 10% which tracks with the increase in families with own children and rise in median income seen from 2015-2019.
Test scores rose at the same time that more families with their own children entered the district and median income rose during this time.
Other Districts
How do Hastings test scores fare against nearby districts, however?
Nearby districts like South Washington (ISD 833), Cannon Falls (ISD 252), Farmington (ISD 192), Randolph (ISD 195) and Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan (ISD 196) show a wide spread of test results in which Hastings falls in the middle.
Of the above listed schools, none surpassed their own scores from the final MCA II year in 2012.
MCA III 10th grade reading test results for Farmington and Randolph collapsed after 2012, dropping to a 37.5% meets and exceeds rate for Farmington and 50.0% for Randolph by 2018.
While Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan never dropped below 70% meets and exceeds proficiency, by 2018 it had risen to 72.6%, just over a point higher than Hastings 2018 10th grade reading scores.
Cannon Falls and South Washington led the pack with 2018 scores of 77.1% and 75.1% 10th grade reading meets or exceeds scores respectively.
Recent data from the Minnesota Report Card showcases district-wide proficiency dating back to after the pandemic in 2021. District-wide numbers obviously fall below the 10th grade levels, but are able to broadly show the impact of the pandemic on school districts.
Last week MDE released 2025 MCA test results and of the districts mentioned, the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district leads the pack with 56.7% of students meeting proficiency. Hastings again sits at the middle of pack, but this year was the first year Hastings has dropped below 50% of students district-wide meeting reading standards with 49.2% of students meeting reading standards.
Along with the comparison of test results, it is worth asking if other nearby districts are similarly experiencing declining enrollment perhaps from some of the structural demographic issues discussed last week.
Not really.
Even just looking at high school enrollment in nearby high schools, schools like Park Senior High, Farmington High School, Rosemount Senior High, and East Ridge High School have all seen growth over the past twenty years, although the COVID-19 Pandemic has shifted those trends.
While Park Senior High in Cottage Grove has remained largely stable over the last 20 years, the school actually saw an increase in enrollment after the pandemic.
Farmington High School has more than doubled in size since the turn of the century, but that growth largely stopped after the pandemic.
Graduation Rates
Hastings continues to beat out statewide graduation rates by a healthy margin of about 10%. That being said, Hastings graduation rate has declined since the pandemic, falling by 3% from 96.1% in 2020 to 93.1% in 2024.
Similar to MCA data, Hodges warned that graduation rates represent a snapshot that pits grades of students against each other. Some grades just test better for any number of reasons, and similarly, some grades will have higher graduation rates.
Instead, a better metric is cohort graduation rate which tracks the number of students who graduated four years after they entered 9th grade while being regularly adjusted to account for transfers in and out.
Cohort graduation rates compare the number of students who entered the 9th grade with those who graduated in four years, thus comparing cohorts to themselves rather than comparing grades.
Using Hastings cohort graduation rates, the graduation rate has still declined since the pandemic, but not as steeply, actually beating some pre-pandemic numbers like those from 2017.
The year with the highest cohort graduation rate occurred in 2020, the year with the fourth smallest percentage drop in ADM since 2010.
Private Schools and Homeschooling
Especially after the pandemic, public schools faced steeper competition from private schools and parents choosing homeschooling.
This is a trend far broader than just Hastings, but here those factors are again significant.
Across Minnesota, the overall number of students being homeschooled reached its highest point on record in 2024.
In Hastings, MDE homeschooling data only dates back to 2022, but since then, the number of students being homeschooled in town has more than doubled from 148 students in 2022 to 509 in 2024 according to MDE data.
Similarly, many local private schools have seen increased enrollment since the pandemic.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is seeing its first “back-to-back increased enrollment for the first time since 1996” with total enrollment for the year estimated to be 215 according to their website.
Other private schools like Pine Harbor Christian Academy have seen enrollment sharply rise from pre-pandemic numbers.
This trend is not without its exceptions, however.
St. Thomas Academy had 562 students for the 24-25 school year, which is a decline from pre-pandemic enrollment numbers.
Academics and Enrollment
Tate’s question at the beginning of this series still cuts to the heart of the issue of declining enrollment:
“How do you become a destination district for all families when all family needs are different?”
The short answer is: you can’t. The needs of families are diverse and so too, therefore, are the reasons they move.
Even the seemingly objective standards of academic achievement like tests scores that often used to judge schools against themselves or one another are flawed.
MCAs represent a snapshot of a single day that can be wildly affected by something as mundane as if the student had breakfast that morning.
Another issue raised by Hodges was that of massive lag times within institutional changes. Here Hodges was talking about the READ Act which in recent months has showcased some incredible data for the youngest students in the district who have only been taught the new curriculum, but hasn’t changed the district overall, especially for older students.
“Most of the kids who take the MCAs, have not been impacted by the READ Act at a great level,” said Hodges.
This same concept of lag times can be applied to many of the demographic and district factors as well. Low birthrates in a single year theoretically doesn’t affect enrollment that same year but only as those students enroll years later.
Similarly, improved test scores might not affect who comes to the district that year, but in the years following.
Enrollment Measures
Declining enrollment has been a focus for district officials and the school board and actions meant to be taken.
When asked about which measures stood out as most likely to move the needle, School Board Carrie Tate referenced a few different initiates.
First and foremost is the Pathways program that seeks to build partnerships with local businesses in order to provide students with opportunities with industry experience and the ability to earn college credit and various industry certification while in high school.
Along this line is the shift from AP tests to concurrent enrollment which seeks to provide students with guaranteed college credits rather than force them to take high-stakes tests at the end of the year where credits are dependent on test score.
Finally increased transparency was another metric Tate referenced.
The school perception survey began in the 2022-2023 school year and gauged opinions on students, staff, and teachers on a number of topics from feelings of safety to what they valued most about Hastings schools to what they thought needed to change.
The survey was done by the company School Perceptions and Project Manager Daren Sievers didn’t mince words when talking about the district’s results calling them among “the best I’ve ever given,” at the Nov. 20 2024 school board meeting.
“I am incredibly hopeful that we are turning this trend around,” said Tate.