PIERRE, S.D. – The South Dakota Department of Education (DOE) released its 2024-25 Report Card today, which showed meaningful, though modest, improvements in overall academic achievement during the school year.

The percent of students performing at grade level on English language arts again rose one additional percentage point, reaching 52 percent. In math, the percent of students at grade level remained at 44. Notably, the percent of students meeting growth targets rose from 54 to 56 percent in ELA and from 50 to 51 percent in math.  

“We should celebrate the students who have demonstrated their mastery over a grade-level body of knowledge and readiness to move on to more advanced concepts, showing they are on track for college and career-level content,” said Secretary of Education Dr. Joseph Graves. “That said, we know more remains to be done.”

DOE expects ELA proficiencies to improve in a more dramatic fashion over the next few years as the Science of Reading is restored in elementary schools. New math standards, now under consideration, have the potential to produce positive effects in numeracy.

A notable bright spot is graduation rates, which rose two points to 86%, the highest rate in ten years. This was buoyed by a five-percentage point increase in the rate for Native American students, the highest rate in five years.

For instructional changes to reflect in report card scores, however, students need to be in the classroom to gain from that instruction—academic improvement is reliant on more regular student attendance. Student attendance rates, though, remain stubbornly unchanged, a situation which will require an all-hands-on-deck response from everyone involved in the lives of South Dakota’s children.

The full Report Card is now available at https://sdschools.sd.gov.

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