Michigan schools are now average. That’s progress. – Bridge Michigan

Michigan public school students show marked improvement compared to their peers in other states, according to national test results released Wednesday.

On the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the nations report card, Michigan students were firmly in the middle of the pack in eighth-grade math and reading (28th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in both) and fourth-grade reading (32d); Michigan fourth-graders were 42d in math, a drop from 38th in 2017.

While approaching average doesnt sound like cause for celebration, it does indicate that Michigan schools, which have languished in the bottom third of the nation for most of the decade, may be improving when compared to other states.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called the results a step in the right direction, and great news for our students and families that were making progress on literacy.

In general, Michigan improved by not losing ground: Its tests scores were similar to those in 2017 when the test was last administered, while many states, and the national average, declined slightly over that period. NAEP officials Tuesday said they did not know why scores were dropping nationally.

Detroits fourth-graders took a leap forward in math, raising their average scores by the most of any of the nations major cities that took part in the test. Still, Detroit remains at the back of the pack among 27 large cities across the country that volunteer to participate.

Only Detroits traditional public school students took the NAEP test public charter schools and private schools were excluded. The NAEP is given to a sample of students in cities and states across the country.

State-level tests, such as Michigans M-STEP, offer comparisons of schools within state borders, but say nothing about how Michigan students fare against their peers in other states.

Thats where the NAEP comes in. The biennial NAEP test results give education leaders, politicians and families of school children state-to-state comparisons of education systems. Without NAEP, Michigan would have difficulty determining if its schools are doing great or horribly compared to the rest of the nation.

The test was administered to about 300,000 students in traditional public, charter and private schools nationally in the spring of 2019, along with 27 urban districts including Detroit.

Major takeaways from the Michigan results:

Michigan School Superintendent Michael Rice said the states schools improved their ranking among peers in other states despite two significant challenges: a statewide teacher shortage (there are teacher shortages nationally), which adversely affects most severely the highest poverty and/or most remote districts, and inadequate and inequitable state funding for Michigans 1.5 million children.

Imagine how much more rapid our improvement could be if we invested more in our children and funded their specific needs, Rice said.

John Yun, associate professor of education at Michigan State University, who looked at the latest NAEP data for Bridge, pointed to another warning sign inside the data. While test score averages for the state are flat, there is a growing gap between the states highest-achieving students and its lowest-achieving. The test scores of those two groups are diverging, Yun said.

For example, in eighth-grade math, the gap between the top 10 percent of readers and the lowest 10 percent has grown by almost a semester of learning over the past decade, according to NAEP scores.

People are reading much better now than two decades ago, but weve given back a lot of the gains since 2009, Yun said. And its striking that the losses are most felt at the lowest achievement levels.

Amber Arellano, executive director of Michigan-based Education Trust-Midwest, said she saw glimmers of hope and pessimism for Michigan schools in the latest test results.

Today is cause for a sobering celebration, Arellano said. Between 2017 and 2019, Michigan low-income students led the nation for improvement in eighth-grade math. These notable gains should be applauded.

On the other hand, Michigan is still not a top-improving state since 2003 for key subjects such as early reading. And the data suggest Michigan is many years away from becoming a top education state for all students, particularly students who are most left behind in our state. This new data should be a clarion call for changing how we invest and support public education for all children in our state."

See the original post here:

Michigan schools are now average. That's progress. - Bridge Michigan