ST. PAUL — Minnesota parents are being warned that their children may receive lower test scores now that the state has adopted new national benchmarks known as the Common Core State Standards.

State Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius alerted parents in a letter late last week. She wrote that because Minnesota is using more rigorous standards to teach English arts, schools gave students more challenging tests to measure their progress in meeting the higher expectations.

That means there may be a drop in reading and writing scores when they’re released this summer, she wrote. But she said it’s not appropriate to compare the new scores with previous results because they measure different sets of expectations.

Read the rest of the story here at the Minnesota Public Radio website.