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85 4 Assessing the Academic Outcomes of Schooling FROM OPPOSITIOn TO ACCEPTAnCE Today in Michigan there is an abundance of comparative information available on the academic outcomes of schooling, on how public school students are performing in critical academic subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies. This information is broken out by individual schools and school districts, and is collected and publicly reported annually by the MDE. The information is not only available by school, but also by grades within a school. A parent in East Lansing can easily review the results and see how the 4th grade pupils as a group in the Donley elementary school are doing in reading, writing, and mathematics. A parent in Ann Arbor can look at reading scores for 7th graders in the Tappan middle school, or the mathematics scores for the same 7th graders. A parent in Muskegon can find out how 11th graders in the Muskegon high school scored on the Michigan Merit Exam, including how those 11th graders scored as a group on the ACT. This information on student academic performance also is aggregated at the state level and publicly released, so the interested Michigan citizen is able to get a clear sense of the degree to which the state’s public school pupils are achieving proficiency in critical school subjects, whether it be reading, writing, mathematics, science, or social studies. And interested parents or citizens can go one step further by looking to see how Michigan pupils, and schools, are doing in comparison to pupils and schools in other states and in the nation as a whole. They can ask, “How are Michigan schools doing compared to Ohio schools? How is Michigan doing compared to the nation as a whole?” And they can easily find the answers, because now there is comparative information from the NAEP readily available on the Internet and in the print media that allows one to view the levels of reading proficiency and math proficiency in each of the 50 states as measured by the NAEP. 86 Addonizio and Kearney But it was not always so. Prior to 1969, it was not possible to find out how the state’s public schools were doing in reading and math. It was not possible for a parent to find out how his or her child’s school or school district was doing in these two critical academic areas. There was no statewide academic performance information available whatsoever . While most schools and school districts did administer one or more of the many available standardized testing programs, there was no common testing program across the entire state. Nor for that matter were the results of the district and school testing programs made public. Comparing schools and school districts on the basis of pupils’academic achievement was considered anathema. In many cases, results were not even to be shared with a parent. Test results most often were “embargoed ,” to be shared only with teachers, counselors, and administrators, and perhaps, from time to time, with members of the local school board. There existed a deep and ingrained opposition to sharing test results with anyone other than a professional educator. And there was even stronger opposition to building a state system that would produce student achievement information and allow comparisons among schools and school districts within a given region or state. To build a national system that would allow comparisons between and among states was considered an equal if not greater offense. But in spite of opposition from the professional education community , these systems were built and today they produce a rich array of information on the academic achievement of pupils in our public schools. The breakthrough in Michigan came in 1969 with the launch of the MEAP. The breakthrough at the national level came in 1970 with the initial public report of the NAEP. But before they became a reality, each of these programs had to undergo a gauntlet of strong opposition from the entrenched forces of the profession—the teacher unions, the professional curriculum and subject matter associations, the administrator associations, and in many cases even recalcitrant legislators. Some sense of the nature of this ingrained opposition in Michigan to the MEAP can be gleaned from the comments back in 1970 of the curriculum director of an affluent, suburban school district: “The [program] is really politics masquerading as research. Promise after promise has been broken. Plans have been dictated and changed by the legislature . . . It is not an...

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