The long-awaited MEAP scores are finally available in Michigan:
After months of delays getting state standardized test scores, state education officials will begin to start putting together schools' yearly progress data and long-anticipated report cards...
The education department needed the MEAP data to calculate a school's yearly progress, required by federal education law, and finish the report cards.
A number of factors contributed to the score delay, including duplicate barcodes and schools that were late in sending in their tests to be scored. A state Senate committee took several hours of testimony from the contractors and state departments to figure out the cause of the problem.
Some schools aren't happy, because some scores are still missing:
Portage Public Schools officials are upset that despite their pleas, they've been told long-delayed state standardized-test results are being released today even though some of the district's scores are incomplete because hundreds of tests are missing...
Portage officials said they made the state aware of mistakes, including the hundreds of missing scores, but they say that as far as they know the mistakes haven't been fixed...
In one example in Portage, 201 students took the seventh-grade reading and English language-arts test at North Middle School, but the state has the results for only one test. Consequently, the reported average is based on a single student's performance.
"It's based on one child, based on one test. We're saying that's inappropriate," said Tom Vance, Portage's communications director.
Yes, indeedy, it's inappropriate. I mean, the sample sizes should be considered when any statistics are reported, or interpreted - but I certainly hope the school can highlight this, and will not get scored based on such a small sample size.
Posted by kswygert at October 3, 2003 02:09 PM