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From 1-13-04 Meeting of MI State Board of Ed
Including Return of Federal Funds, Ed YES! Appeals, and
Mentoring
Gongwer News Service, January 14, 2004
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While the rest
of the state is worrying about trying to make ends meet, the
Department of Education is doing its share to be sure that it
brings in the maximum amount of federal money and spends all of
that money, officials told the State Board of Education at its
meeting Tuesday.
Deputy Superintendent Carol Wollenberg said there is always
going to be some federal grant money that comes into the
department but is never spent, but she said recent reports of
millions of dollars of unspent money were essentially
incomplete. While the department may not have spent all of the
money it received in a given federal fiscal year, in the vast
majority of cases that money is still available to spend in
future years.
"The only thing worse than overspending is to not spend the
resources we have," said Superintendent of Public Instruction
Tom Watkins.
Of the federal grants received by the department since fiscal
year 1999-2000, $53.17 million has not been spent of $2.49
billion in grants. But of that, only $13.4 million has expired
and is not longer available, according to a departmental report.
The remainder must be spent before FY 2005-06 begins.
Roberta Stanley, who oversees the federal grant programs for the
department, said in many cases the grants are intended for small
districts that decide not to accept the money. If the law
creating the grant does not allow the funds to be shifted to
another district, the money goes unspent.
EDUCATION YES APPEALS: Chief Academic Officer Jeremy Hughes
attempted Tuesday to steel board members against the criticisms
that are likely to come with the release of Education YES!
accreditation grades on January 30, a date he said the
department is on track to hit.
Primary among the concerns will be from some districts that
have, by default, had appeals of their scores dismissed. Forty
high schools and 134 elementary and middle schools that argued
their scores under the accreditation system or under the federal
Adequate Yearly Progress measurement were incorrect will have to
live with those scores, Mr. Hughes told the board Tuesday.
Though the schools had filed timely appeals of the department's
calculations, they had not responded to the department's
requests for additional information.
Mr. Hughes informed schools last week that they would have until
the end of the day Monday to submit the information requested,
in most cases proof that additional students had taken the MEAP
who had not been counted by the state, or the department would
stick with what it has.
If the information does come in over the next week, department
officials will try to consider it, but Mr. Hughes said the
department now needs to shift gears to putting the information
into the report card format that will be released at the end of
the month.
The department is also likely to take some heat, if not this
year in future years, from some high performing districts that
take a hit because of drops in their MEAP scores.
Mr. Hughes said the grade for change in average score does not
account for the starting point for the school, so schools with
the vast majority of their students scoring proficient on the
MEAP tests that see their percentage proficient drop a point or
two could receive an F on that measure while receiving As or Bs
on all other measures. He said the department is reviewing ideas
to resolve that concern.
Bases for Adequate Yearly Progress scores may also change next
year. Mr. Hughes noted that under the state's current definition
of a group, 30 students, there is not much room for absences on
MEAP days. Federal law requires that 95 percent of all students
take the state's standardized test, including 95 percent of any
minority group within the school.
To ensure that 95 percent of a group of 30 students takes the
test, no more than one of the students in that group could be
absent on the test days.
Other states are using 30-student groups for determining
percentages of students scoring proficient, but use 40-student
groups for attendance measurements. The larger group allows two
students to be absent and still meet the federal requirements.
The last round of testing also resulted in 3,087 missing test
papers, Mr. Hughes said, all coming from Battle Creek, Beal
City, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Pinckney,
Portage and Saline schools.
As long as the missing tests represented less than 95 percent of
tests taken in the school or district, the known scores were
used to calculate Education YES! grades and Adequate Yearly
Progress. If the missing tests represented more than 95 percent
of the tests taken in that subject, the school would not receive
an Ed YES! grade for that subject.
For AYP, schools missing more than 95 percent of their tests in
a subject would be allowed to either provide other testing
information on that subject, as some have, or retain their AYP
standing from the previous year.
Mr. Hughes said the department will also have to work with
districts over the coming months to clarify when special
education students are required to take the MEAP tests and when
they can take the MI-Access alternative test.
MENTORING STANDARDS: State law requires that all new teachers
have a mentor assigned for the first three years on the job, but
until now the Department of Education has not had standards for
mentoring programs.
The new standards provide six requirements that mentoring
programs must meet to be considered adequate under the law.
Within the six standards are a variety of requirements such as
criteria for selecting mentors, professional development plans
for all new teachers, and assists new teachers not only in
learning to teach, but in learning to work within the school
culture.
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