fund

What follows are two emails; the first is my response to MCSS and the second is their initial email to me.

Kelli,

As we say in the letter, it is a matter of cost benefit. In times of financial hardship how can we justify spending over $1M dollars for an assessment that has demonstrated little or no use to the education community (including your members). When, we desperately need some form of high school predictability assessment that can be used BY ALL faculty (including your members) to demonstrate growth at the high school? We continue our support of the grade 11 social studies test.

On Feb 13, 2009, at 1:09 PM, KSweetMCSS@aol.com wrote:

Hi Jim and Joe,

I’ve just returned from a joint meeting with the two leading Senators of the Senate Appropriation Committee. There I asked on behalf of the association legislation to fund the EXPLORE test for every school in the state.

They were extremely receptive to our request. In fact, they wanted to go much further than what we requested. In light of the pending funding reductions, they asked that I ask our members for suggestions to reduce our state assessment costs so as not take money from school operations. I agreed to seek member input. You’ll be seeing a request via our MASSP Communication system.

Here’s our formal request in regard to EXPLORE.

Michigan may get $2.6 billion, feds say
BY TODD SPANGLER AND LORI HIGGINS • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
JANUARY 23, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Just how much would the $825-billion federal stimulus plan be worth to hard-hit Michigan?
We're starting to find out.
The Congressional Research Service -- the agency that figures these sorts of things out for legislators -- says Michigan would get about $1.4 billion of the $38 billion in aid for school districts and $1.2 billion of the $43 billion for so-called "shovel ready" infrastructure projects such as highway and bridge work.
That is in addition to the usual federal budget that carries billions of dollars of aid to the states already.