test

The letter below was sent to the Michigan Legislature on June 17, 2009. In addition to the letter a fact sheet was enclosed (click here to download the fact sheet (DOC). The association notified association members of an ACTION ELERT on June 16th. Members were given sample letters and asked to send to their legislators.

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Dear Senator

We must do everything in our power to help Michigan students succeed in the real world.

May 14, 2009

This notice is intended exclusively for schools (public and nonpublic) that will administer the MEAP, MI-Access or MEAP-Access assessments in Fall 2009. If you are a nonpublic school and will NOT administer the MEAP, MI-Access or MEAP-Access in Fall 2009, please disregard this notice.

The accompanying documents contain important information regarding pre-identification of students and student counts for the Fall 2009 MEAP, MI-Access, and MEAP-Access assessments:

• Fall 2009 MEAP - Steps for Pre-ID and Student Counts
• MEAP Pre-ID Options
• Response Form for Fall 2009 MEAP Pre-ID Options
• Fall 2009 MI-Access - Steps for Pre-ID and Student Counts
• Fall 2009 MEAP-Access – Steps for Pre-ID and Student Counts

Board Requests Legislative Help

The State Board of Education today joined the growing call from education officials to lengthen the school year back to 180 days.

As a part of four requests the Board sent to the Legislature today, the Board asked lawmakers to require school districts hold a minimum of 180 days of school each year rather than simply requiring 1,098 hours of instruction.

The request comes after a survey of more than 750 public school districts and charter schools released last month by the nonpartisan Center for Michigan found that 98 percent of Michigan schools fall short of the 180-day standard across much of the country, something state Superintendent Mike FLANAGAN said at the time was "outrageous" (See "Districts Cutting School Days To Cut Costs," 3/16/09).

The association in its efforts to get support for universal use of EXPLORE is getting slimed by the Economic Educators with backdoor help from the Department of Education. After reading their appeal to stop MASSP's effort to shift funding from the 9th grade social studies test to EXPLORE you'd think that our executive director was in competition for the "meanest person in the world" award.

Here's what they had to say about our effort:

Members of the MCEE Board of Directors:

MASSP is in the doghouse with the Department of Education. Two reasons: Trying to shift the money spent on the 9th grade social studies exam to EXPLORE, and our public statement about the proposed MI-SAS accreditation program.

When polled, 97% of our membership doesn’t see value in the 9th grade social studies exam. Our governor in her state-of-the-state speech called on us to find ways to reduce wasted state costs without hurting its citizens. So we proposed legislation to shift this money to something 60% of schools do value. We feel it is a matter of equality.

News Statement
CONTACT: Sandy Boyd, (202) 419-1542, sboyd@achieve.org

Momentum Builds, Yet Work Remains in the Years Ahead to Ensure All Students Graduate Ready for College and Careers

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.

Old law and new law... which parts are still in place?
What classes can students test out of?
If a student fails a class, can he/she later test out of the class?
Does a student who tests out of a class still earn credit?

Jim and MDE's Sam Sinicropi talk about Testing out.

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Money helps pay for printing costs after budget cuts

By Linda Lou

11:40 a.m. November 22, 2008

RANCHO BERNARDO — Kevin Change said it
was strange the first time he saw an advertisement across the bottom of
his calculus test. But now he and his classmates look for them.

“It's really interesting to see what it is each time,” said Change, 16, a junior at Rancho Bernardo High School.

Some are pithy one-liners, hawking the names of local businesses:
“Brace Yourself for a Great Semester! Braces by Henry, Stephen P. Henry
D.M.D.”