As some of you might have seen in the news, the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) announced yesterday that they will be shortening some components of the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress (MSTEP). One of the major concerns that school leaders and teachers across the state had regarding the MSTEP was the amount of time being spent testing. I personally attended a meeting with representatives from MDE in June and voiced my frustrations over the insane length of these assessments. Thankfully, the powers that be listened to our frustrations and have made the necessary changes. The biggest change is around the length of time that our 11th grade students are being tested in the spring. Last year, the 11th grade students took all four components of the MSTEP, along with the ACT and WorkKeys, which resulted in a large amount of testing time. This spring, the Michigan Merit Exam will consist of the SAT, Work Keys, Science MSTEP, and Social Studies MSTEP. The subtraction of the English and Math MSTEP will reduce state-required testing time in 11th grade by up to 8 hours. The other change focuses on our 3rd grade to 8th grade students. For the 2016 MSTEP, the Performance Task portion of the English language arts assessment will only be administered once in elementary school (grade 5) and once in middle school (grade 8). This change reduces testing time in the 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th grades by two and a half hours.
I have the honor of being selected as one of the 2015-2016 Michigan Educator Voice Fellows through America Achieves. Public education has been a passion of mine since a very early age. My mother just retired from the Lansing Public Schools after 30+ years of teaching 5th grade. The Michigan Educator Voice Fellowship allows me to advocate for public education, along side some of the best educators in the state of Michigan. During my time at the two-day launch convention in Grand Rapids, I was able to discover two items that have ignited a passion within me: Teacher Evaluations and Michigan's College and Career Readiness Curriculum (i.e. "common core"). Throughout the next few months, I will be rolling out some blogs and op-ed pieces focusing on these two key issues. I encourage everyone to pay attention to these issues as they are discussed by our Congressmen and women in Lansing, specifically SB 103 (teacher and administrator performance evaluations) and the discussion over our state curriculum. As always, please discuss these issues with me and how they will impact the quality of education for our students at Byron Center Charter.
|
AuthorPrincipal, Alpena High School Archives
March 2021
Categories |