Students in Buena Vista schools in Michigan haven’t been to class since last Friday, mlive reports, and it is expected the classrooms will remain vacant for days more. The district, which educates about 420 students, found itself in severe financial difficulty after the state declined to turn over education funds for the next three months as a penalty for district overcharging.

As a result, Buena Vista has no money to pay the salaries of its staff.

Earlier this week, the Board of Education voted to retain only three staff members employed by the district and lay off the rest.

Michigan Board of Education is refusing to turn over state aid payments for at least the months of April, May and June because Buena Vista accepted nearly half a million dollars to educate a number of students from the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center who are no longer part of the district.

The Board of Education will meet next at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 9, at Buena Vista High School, 3943 E. Holland. Jackson said the board plans to declare a financial emergency. About 100 people attended an informational community meeting on Tuesday evening at the high school. Parents and students said the meeting didn’t answer their questions about the district’s future.

Board President Randy L. Jackson hopes that the declaration of emergency will mean the release of some emergency funding from the Michigan Board of Education to help the district continue operating. In order to facilitate the release of the money, the district plans to submit a deficit elimination plan to the state BoE.

At the moment, Buena Vista School District is running a $1 million budget deficit on top of the payments on a $2 million loan from the state treasurury that is has to make this August.

Withholding of state aid isn’t the only problem facing Buena Vista – one of the worst-performing districts in the state. It is also attempting to balance its resources to deal with a student population which is today barely half of what it was only three years ago.

Buena Vista School District since 2010 has lost nearly $3 million in state funding because of declining enrollment. Richard Syrek, Saginaw Intermediate School District superintendent, said the district’s financial situation stemmed from a combination of a rapid decline in students and administrators not reacting quickly enough to declining state aid.

Syrek says that leaders are not willing to make the needed cuts because they don’t want to lose programs. Yet the administrators – who were caught completely flatfooted by the declines in both student numbers and aid – don’t seem to have a plan to deal with the budget crisis in any other way.

Until the crisis is resolved, students have no school to attend.

The post Michigan District Declares Financial Emergency, Temporary Shutdown appeared first on Education News.

School districts around the country are taking part in a limited pilot that seeks to replace their state’s version of standardized achievement exams with an online-only test to assess students fully by adapting questions based on their skill level.

Students at 700 Oakland County, Michigan schools are taking part in the exam program which will offer each test-taker tougher questions if they’re performing well and let up in the difficulty if the student is struggling. In total, more than 1 million students from around the country will be participating.

The goal, educators say, is to better define a student’s achievement level so instruction can be adjusted.

Michigan is working with about two dozen states to develop and pilot the test that will replace the Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) by the 2014-15 school year.

The spring pilot will be conducted in grades three through 11 in English language arts/literacy and mathematics.

The test is not fully ready for implementation this year. The students in the pilot will simply be trying out the test-taking software this time around for ease of use and comprehension. The adaptive component won’t be made available to them quite yet nor will they be receiving any exam grades.

This round of testing is allowing the designers to gather data on the students and will allow them to tweak the exam prior to its official launch in 2014 and will be subsequently administered every spring.

Because the exam will be administered fully online, it will benefit educators by allowing them to receive the final grades a mere 48 hours after it’s been administered. This give schools a lot of information to work with as well as identify struggling students quickly giving educators an opportunity to address their difficulties.

If the pilot is successful, it is anticipated that the new exam will replace the Michigan Education Assessment Program test which the students currently take every fall but for which the results don’t come back until spring.

State educators are excited about the pilot opportunity.

“This will provide the state with invaluable information on technology readiness to support moving to (an) online, computer-adaptive assessment, as well as give many Michigan students and educators a direct experience with Smarter Balanced items,” said Vince Dean, director of the office of standards and assessments with the Michigan Department of Education.

Mary Beth Fitzpatrick, an assistant superintendent of assessments in Berkley School District, said she is excited by the chance to participate in the pilot.

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The middle of the school year has many states and districts contemplating half-year assessments. Michigan Live says that the Michigan Education Assessment Program test scores for grades 3 through 8 were released this week. Tim Martin reports that while some test averages improved a little, the new scoring system resulted in fewer students marked as passing, especially on factual tests in science in social studies.

Michigan’s previous “cut score” system was considered too easy and misleading by some, allowing students to be deemed “proficient” with less than 40 percent of questions answered correctly on some tests. The new standards generally require students to answer about 65 percent of the questions correctly to meet the mark.

The good news for the state came in reading scores. Even with tighter scoring standards, the percentage of students who passed the reading test was up in all grades. In the lowest grade tested, 66.5% of 3rd graders did well enough on the test, compared to 62.4% last year. At the top of the scale, 8th graders passed the reading portion at a rate of 65.7%, up 5 percentage points from last year’s 60.5%. Grades in between showed smaller gains, but all of the passing rates went up at least a little.

At the same time, although the rates all went up, teachers would have hoped for higher numbers. 70.4% of 5th graders were deemed proficient, but that was the high-water mark for all tests and ages.Where all readings tests were passed by at least 62% of students, no tests of writing, math, science or social studies came close to those levels.

Science was the most discouraging news for state officials; the science test is given in 5th and 8th grades. Only 15.9% of 8th graders and 13.1% of 5th graders passed in science. Last year’s results were within a few percentage points of this year’s, but even so, both grades dropped a little. 6th and 9th grade social studies clocked in around 28% passing rate. 4th and 7th graders took writing tests, passing them at rates of 46.7% and 51.7%, both up a little from last year. Math tests were passed at discouraging rates of 30 and 40% by all grades, but school officials noted that at least all grades improved over last year.

The state’s superintendent of schools put an optimistic face on the results. What matters, he said, is the mostly upward movement.

“These gains demonstrate Michigan’s teachers and students are rising to the challenge of the rigorous standards established last year,” Flanagan said in a statement. “I am encouraged by the progress we are making in Michigan and look forward to the continued efforts to help all students achieve at a higher level in all subjects.”

The Education Trust-Midwest, an independent education watchdog and policy advocate, pointed out that optimism should be tempered with concern.

“The Education Trust-Midwest commends steady improvements by Michigan K-12 students in some key subjects on the 2012 state academic assessments,” the group said in a statement. “But we are troubled by students’ continued struggles with science and math compared with other states, and by persistently low achievement gaps that negatively impact poor students and students of color.”

The post Tighter Test Scoring in Michigan Shows Mixed Results appeared first on Education News.

Is it fair for a school district to demand that parents pony up extra money to cover mandatory expenses for their children’s education? That is the question being asked by one family in the Birmingham school district in Michigan, who have filed a class action lawsuit claiming that those demands violate state policy.

The suit, filed by John and Laurie Kelly in the Oakland Circuit Court, draws attention to the number of items that parents are asked to purchase prior to the beginning of the new school year. In addition to the requirements, which often include school-day staples like notebooks, pencils and folders, Birmingham schools also routinely charge additional fees for things like locks for lockers in the school gym and a required physical education uniform.

The complaint maintains the charges violate a Michigan State Board of Education policy that dates to 1972. The policy says students cannot be ordered to pay special fees and that if a school system makes such requirements, it must provide the materials to all students free of charge.

The school’s attorneys think that the suit is without merit. The school district is certain that they will prevail in the courtroom, but the attorney representing the parents disagrees. Mark Wasvary says that there’s a distinction that needs to be made between optional expenses levied by the school and mandatory ones. He added that the policy makes clear that no fees can be charged simply for attending a state public school. The way he and the family see it, this means that requirements that a uniform be purchased in order to take physical education violates the rule.

Wasvary said the Kellys’ son, Gabriel, attends sixth grade at Derby Middle School. In August, students were required to purchase a “Destination Derby” assignment book ($10) that includes a dress code and other policies. The school also required locks to be purchased from the school ($6) because it holds the master key for access to lockers.

“The gym uniform they must purchase costs $19 and has a T-shirt which says ‘Birmingham Physical Education’ — what do they need that for?” Wasvary asked.

Students who don’t wear the correct uniform receive grade deductions.

The lawsuit could expand to cover a class action as large as 2,100 students and their families – the whole student body attending the three schools in the district. But that’s not all; that means that going back 6 years, which is the statute of limitation for a case such as this, over 12,000 students could be effected by the outcome of the lawsuit.

The post Michigan Parents Sue to Challenge Mandatory School Fees appeared first on Education News.

According to data released by the U.S. Department of Education, a mere 7% of 8th graders attending schools in Detroit, Michigan are proficient at reading. According to CNSNews, these findings put a day of protests by public sector employees, including teachers, scheduled for today and later this week into stark relief.

The report also shows that the percentage of students who are at grade level in mathematics is even lower, with only 4% scoring well enough on the National Assessment of Educational Progress 2011 exam to be considered either proficient or better.

Although Michigan as a whole performed better than Detroit, the numbers still represent a serious cause for concern. Roughly 30% of Michigan students achieved results high enough to be considered proficient in mathematics, with a slightly higher number showing proficiency in reading and literacy.

68 percent of Michigan public-school eighth graders are not proficient in reading and 69 percent are not proficient in math.

According to the data, there has been almost no improvement in student outcomes in the state over the past ten years; only 32% of school children in Michigan were at grade level in reading in 2002.

The news is somewhat better when it comes to math. Over the last decade, the number of children who are considered proficient or better in mathematics went up by three percentage points, from 28% to 31%.

Meanwhile, as Governor Rick Snyder was preparing to sign the Right to Work bill into law on Tuesday, teachers massed in protest, with so many taking sick and vacation days that several school districts across the state were forced to shut down.

The “sick outs” have caused district-wide closures across Warren Consolidated Schools, Taylor School District and Fitzgerald Public Schools. According to Michigan Capitol Confidential, a publication by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a right-wing think tank in the state, the closures affect at least 26,000 students.

The new law will stop automatic payroll deduction for union dues from public employees’ paychecks, leaving the option to join or opt out of the union up to each individual employee. While the lawmakers who proposed and voted for the measure say that this allows workers the freedom of association guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, union supporters claim that the law’s only purpose is to weaken union protection and ability to advocate on behalf of its members.

President Barack Obama, who was in the state this week, called the legislation plainly political, describing it as “the freedom to work for less money.”

The post Right to Work Protests Grow, Michigaan Students Underperform appeared first on Education News.

The overhaul of Michigan’s education system is going full steam ahead, even if some parts of the plan to turn schools in the state around aren’t quite in their final form yet. Two of the proposals that will guide the process are already making their way through the state Legislature, and one is currently in the draft stage but hasn’t yet been introduced.

Richard McLellan, the education adviser for Governor Rick Snyder, could claim most of the authorship credit for all three bills. The purpose of the bills is to put in place an education system that lives up to the goal – laid out by Snyder in 2011 – to create an education system that provides learning “Any Time, Any Place, Any Way, Any Pace.”

If the first measure — known as House Bill 5923 — passes, it will allow the creation of a number of different kinds of schools. Among them will be both those based mostly or exclusively online, and ones run and overseen by private entities.

John Austin, president of the state Board of Education, wrote on MLive that the bill could lead to a “‘Wild West’ of unfettered, unregulated new school creation, decoupled from the goal of improving learning and student outcomes.”

House Bill 6004 and the companion Senate Bill 1358 would see all underperforming schools in the state grouped into a single district operating under the auspices of the Education Achievement Authority. The EAA was created last year to run the bottom 5% of Michigan schools, but the two bills would protect the EAA by enshrining its existence into state law.

This year, only 15 schools around Detroit make up the EAA docket, but the Authority will take on schools from all Michigan districts starting next year. At the moment, the Authority operates thanks to an ad-hoc arrangement between Detroit Public Schools and the Eastern Michigan University.

The final component of the overhaul is the Michigan Public Education Finance Project, an enormous 300-page draft of a bill that would change how the state’s education system is funded. It would replace the School Aid Act of 1979. The bill, commissioned by Governor Rick Snyder, was written by Richard McLellan and Peter Ruddell of the Oxford Foundation.

The measure looks to uncouple state funding from the district and assign it directly to the student. The money is set to follow the student — even if he or she chooses to enroll in a school, or take a number of classes in a school, outside the local district.

The post More of Michigan’s Ed Reform Plans Come into Focus appeared first on Education News.

The plan to overhaul Michigan schools proposed by the Michigan Public Education Finance Project has been public for only a few days, yet it is already drawing sharp criticism from many educators and parent groups. The proposal, drawn up at the request of Governor Rick Snyder, radically overhauls many areas of how the education system in the state is funded, including doing away with local district “ownership” of students and their allocated funding. The proposal would allow students to take classes offered outside their local district and see schools share per-student funding on the basis of how many classes each student takes at each institution.

Those who support these proposals say that it will give students and their families much needed flexibility, especially when it comes to seeking out programs and classes not offered in their local schools. But critics assert that assigning funding to the student and not the district will work to drain away money from schools that cater to the most low-income and struggling student populations — and therefore those that are in most dire fiscal need. At least one lawmaker says that the plan will work to dismantle the state’s public education system by using tax money to fund for-profit education ventures rather than for improving student achievement.

“It’s clearly the most fundamental dismantling of our public education that we’ve seen to date,” said Bob McCann, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing.

“It takes taxpayer dollars and hands it over to for-profit corporations to run our schools.”

One of the mainstays that the proposal seeks to eliminate is the annual Count Day. Held on the first Wednesday of October, it is the attendance data collected on that day – and that day only – that determines the school’s funding level. To replace it, the plan calls for the districts to submit enrollment data every month and the funding will be adjusted based on that information over the course of the academic year. By doing away with Count Day, it would absolve schools from reporting attendance data to the state going forward.

The plan also calls for expansion of online course offerings throughout the state. By adjusting the funding formula to allow the per-student state money allocation between the student’s home district and any district where he or she takes additional classes, the project hopes to encourage schools to offer more distance learning opportunities.

Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, which represents charter schools, said the governor is creating an environment to make improvements in education and add incentives.

“And why are we doing this? Because not all kids are ready for the 21st-century work environment,” Quisenberry said.
The proposed changes would make funding more equitable, focus on the student rather than the district and begin to lay the groundwork for testing and achievement policies, he added.

The post Critics Pan New Michigan Education Reform Proposal appeared first on Education News.

In a state that plays host to some of the best research institutions in the country, it might surprise some to find out that the real hotbed of instructional innovation can actually be found in one of the state’s smaller community colleges. Yet, such is the case in Michigan — specifically at Grant Rapids Community College — which has adopted the “flipped classroom” concept to reinvent instruction on its campus.

“Flipping” the classroom involves putting all academic materials, including taped lectures that previously took up precious instructional time, online so students could absorb this material outside of class on their own schedule. Then, the time that used to be devoted to long monologues by the professors while the students served as passive information receptacles, could instead be spent in a much more interactive and engaging manner.

“It’s a new way to look at teaching, and I think that is what is so inspiring,” says Eric Kunnen, director of distance learning and instructional technologies at GRCC. “The idea is not new, but the technology gives more power, flexibility and opportunity to make use of the limited face-to-face time we have for true student engagement and interactive learning.”

Buzzwords like “flipped classroom” or “blended learning” have been thrown around conferences and education media for several years, and that is one reason why the technology team at the GRCC was initially reluctant to adopt the approach. But more research into the forces driving flipped classrooms proved them to be an exceptional way to integrate technology into education to improve student outcomes.

The best part of the new approach is that while technology makes it all possible, it doesn’t serve as the centerpiece of the whole process. It is still old fashioned teaching that produces the results, with the technology allowing the professors to adopt an approach that creates a closer relationship between them and their students.

GRCC’s approach is based on the idea that the classroom is everywhere — or rather, the classroom can be everywhere if the necessary elements are in place: content for mobile devices that are supported by a digital learning infrastructure; bring-your-own-device policies for the classroom that are embraced by the faculty; and long-term IT strategies that are funded by a supportive administration. This approach recognizes the value of hybrid learning. Without forcing any of its faculty to change their methods, GRCC provides the technology and training for anyone who is interested.

Not everyone at GRCC is as enamored of the approach as Kunnen is, but it helps that “flipped classrooms” are not about putting computer screens instead of professors in lecture halls. Some instructors have expressed skepticism that content delivered over the computer is absorbed as well as when it’s delivered face to face. Still, Kunnen expects them to come around to the possibilities offered by the flipped classroom in due course.

The post Grand Rapids Community College Flips its Classrooms appeared first on Education News.

Education Trust-Midwest reports that a study has shown that students who have spent their entire careers in high schools that have implemented the Michigan Merit Curriculum have experienced a boost to their academic achievement. The study also showed that, contrary to the concerns expressed before MMC was adopted, its introduction did not result in a large spike in high school dropout rates.

The MMC, which was put in effect in 2006, was designed to increase the rigor of the coursework used in Michigan high schools. Now, the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research reports that MMC students in the top quartile showed substantial improvement on their ACT exam scores. Unfortunately, a similar bump wasn’t observed for students in the bottom quartile.

“This research raises many important, unanswered questions about the impact of the MMC on students,” said Amber Arellano, executive director of the nonpartisan Education Trust-Midwest research and advocacy group.  “For example, are low-achieving students less likely to have access to the required MMC courses?  There is much that we still need to examine – and address – to ensure all of our Michigan children have the opportunity to learn at high levels.”

The MMC was drawn up in response to research that showed students in low-income, high-minority schools typically didn’t have access to the same comprehensive and rigorous curriculum as their counterparts from wealthier schools. Michigan differs from other states because it doesn’t use statewide standardized exams to access student achievement. Instead, the task of designing and implementing end-of-course exams is left to each local district. As a result, it is difficult to access how the quality of instruction in one district compares to another.

Today’s results also show that Michigan students are reporting that they are not taking all of the required MMC courses, especially in math.  For instance, 28% of students claim that they took less than the four years of the MMC’s required math. An additional 30% of students say that, although they will take four years of math, they will not take all of the required MMC math courses.

“We are encouraged that a second part of this research study will explore the variation in school implementation of this reform around the state,” Arellano said.

The Education Trust-Midwest continues its support of MMC — especially in light of the study’s results — and the group opposes efforts by some state legislators to weaken the curriculum. The program was put into place when businesses expressed a reluctance to relocate to Michigan because of the poor quality of its education system.

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The introduction of more stringent high school graduation requirements in Michigan has contributed to lower graduation rates among underachieving students, The Detroit News reports. Analysis of state education data by the Michigan Consortium for Educational Research shows that a larger percentage of students are now staying in high school for longer than the traditional four years because they are stymied by new standards that focus more on subjects like mathematics and science.

Overall, the analysis was a mix of good news and bad. The adoption of the Michigan Merit Curriculum has pushed the graduation rate of lower-achieving students from 49% before its introduction to 44.5% after. Although the standardized scores went up for students who were well-prepared prior to entering high school, writing scores declined across the board.

“These findings are for the first set of students subject to the new requirements. The results may change as schools and teachers gain experience with the curriculum,” said Susan Dynarski, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and one of the study’s authors. “As more students complete their high school years, we will find out whether the curriculum boosts college attendance and success, a key goal of the reform.”

As part of the MMC, high school students cannot graduate without completing three years of mathematics, two years of science, two years of a foreign language and four years of English language arts. 2011 is the first year that the impact of the MMC could be properly evaluated, as the students who graduated in the spring of 2011 were the first class to enter high school after MMC was introduced in the fall of 2007.

State Superintendent Michael Flanagan said that having the four years’ of data to analyze is important not only to determine how students are performing, but also as a diagnostic tool to see if MMC requires any adjustments.

Amber Arellano, executive director of the nonpartisan Education Trust-Midwest research and advocacy group, said the research raises questions about the impact of the MMC on students.
“For example, are low-achieving students less likely to have access to the required MMC courses? There is much that we still need to examine — and address — to ensure all of our Michigan children have the opportunity to learn at high levels,” she said.

The analysis is based on the data collected from over 700,000 students who have been enrolled in Michigan public high schools between 2007 and 2011.

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