Michigan schools are off the hook when it comes to federal requirements for school accountability, but they are still in limbo when it comes to actually administering standardized “high stakes testing”.
The United States Department of Education waived the federal requirements for school accountability for the 2020-21 school year. The reason for the waiver is the disruption to instruction caused by the pandemic.
Michigan can now use testing to measure long-term goals instead of yearly benchmarks. The state is also required to identify schools for targeted support and improvement based on the 2020-21 data.
Districts are further encouraged to reduce the impact of “high stakes testing” by not holding poor scores against students and teachers when figuring grades, being held back a grade, teacher evaluations, and local school ratings.
Casandra Ulbrich, a Blue Water area native and President of the Michigan State Board of Education reacted to the announcement saying, “The waiver removes the federal ‘high stakes’ from the summative test, but still does not address whether schools will be required to administer the tests this year.”
Ulbrich said that the state is still awaiting a decision from the USDOE on the test waiver.
Reporting for WGRT – Jennie McClelland
