Assessment Information

Assessing and Reporting Performance
(as published in the April 2001, Partners in Education newsletter)

Many factors are involved in determining student and school performance. Some are informal, while others are formal. Here, the District provides an overview of some of its assessment tools and several of the reports that are available to the public regarding District performance.

Standardized Tests
Students in grades four, five, seven, and eight took the annual state MEAP tests a number of weeks ago. The results are expected late in the spring. The MEAP is a “criterion-referenced” testing program. It indicates whether students achieve a predetermined level of performance or number of correct answers on various portions of the test.

In April, students in grades two through five take the CTBS/Terra Nova test. The sixth and eighth grades also take a version of this test. The Terra Nova is one of a number of commonly used nationally standardized achievement tests. While not written specifically for Michigan schools or Michigan’s Core Curriculum, such “norm-referenced” tests do provide information about how our students perform on the test compared to the norms or pattern of scores drawn from a sample of students across the nation.

During the summer, the District also expects to receive the results for this year’s ACT college placement exam and the scores for the Advanced Placement tests that students use to gain college credit for advanced work done while in high school. The number of Thurston High School students participating in each of these voluntary testing programs has recently increased at a significant rate.

Reports
The District’s Annual Report, due out in the summer, provides information about preliminary results on some of the performance measures identified in the District’s Strategic Plan and about student performance on standardized tests such as MEAP, Terra Nova, and ACT.

Two types of reports about Michigan schools are also anticipated soon. One report will be from Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services and the other from the new Michigan Accreditation system.

Sometime during late spring or early summer, Standard & Poor’s will launch a site on the internet that will provide a compilation and an analysis of a wide assortment of information collected about all Michigan school districts. The School Evaluation Service will use data that is already being collected by various state agencies. Its analysis will not include a rating or ranking of districts and will initially be based upon district-level data from the 1998-1999 school year.

The Michigan Accreditation report will indicate the accreditation status of individual schools based upon participation and performance on the MEAP tests. Schools will be designated to be Summary Accredited (the highest designation), Accredited with Recognition, Accredited, or Unaccredited. Part of the ongoing Michigan Accreditation process will be a measure of “Adequate Yearly Progress”, which refers to the extent to which schools experience a reduction in the percent of students scoring in the lower category on the MEAP.