How often does the letter c occur in:
Michigan schools should be bracing for tough news next week, but leaders say its news they need to hear to better prepare students for the future.
State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said the Education Department plans to release “retro scores,” which are MEAP and Michigan Merit Exam results for the last four years, only graded with the new, higher standards that are in place starting with this years exams.
The retro scores wont count for anything, but Flanagan promises the results will be “stark.” Some schools that showed 90 percent of students scoring “proficient” will see those figures drop to as low as 50 percent.
Speaking in a podcast released Friday, Flanagan quoted a recent Bay City Times editorial that said “cheating on tests is supposed to be a no-no, and fibbing to parents should be just as bad.”
Students in the past were able to get about 39 percent of the questions correct and still be branded proficient on some state exams, a practice blasted by groups including the Education Trust-Midwest, which said parents were not getting an accurate reflection of how well their students were doing.
Flanagan was frustrated by the response from some educators after the standards, called “cut scores,” were bumped up this year.
While the actual numbers vary from subject to subject and grade to grade, the new standards will generally require students to get about 65 percent of the questions correct.
“The bar has been raised. I even had one superintendent write to me that the idea of students getting over the higher bar is pie in the sky. Well, I wouldnt want to be a parent with a child in that district.”
“The point is that we want to get our kids to much higher levels of achievement and we must do this quickly. Success is possible for all our kids, and its not pie in the sky.”
He said educators are quick to blame “poverty, culture, school environment and school funding. But the fact is that many schools facing those same challenges are getting results.”
Flanagan pointed to the list of 135 schools deemed “beating the odds” that the department released a year ago, and said people leading struggling schools should look at what works in those schools and replicate it.
Flanagan probably would not have been thrilled to read last weeks post about teachers who said they wont share their successes with colleagues in the same building, much less in other schools.
He said setting high standards and being “honest about where we really are and where we need to be is the right thing to do for our kids and our country.”
Flanagan said Gov. Rick Snyder addressed his cabinet after the recent economic mission to Asia, and it was eye-opening.
Flanagan said he wouldnt advocate for a school system like Chinas, where students are separated by ability early on. But he said Michigan schools need to do better to compete.
“Michigan schools are so good in so many ways. But even with all the good in our schools, not all of the kids in Michigan are getting what we have to say is even a basic education.”
He said Snyder told the group, “If every parent and child spent one day in China, theyd understand what were fighting for here. Chinas going to clean our clocks.”
E-mail Dave Murray: dmurray@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReporterDMurray
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I counted 93 "c"s in that text.
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