Today’s the deadline for teachers and students to tell the state how Michigan's new standardized test went.
The test is called the M-STEP, and students took it for the first time this year.
Last summer, the Legislature scrapped the old test the state had been using for 40 years.
The state Department of Education says that didn't give it much time to put together this new, almost entirely online test.
The state's paying contractors about $103 million for this test over the next three years.
Parents can also fill out surveys about the test through next week.
State: M-STEP won't need to be used this year in teacher evaluations
School districts got a memo Thursday from Linda Forward, the state’s interim deputy superintendent of education services, offering some guidance about teacher evaluations in light of this being the M-STEP’s first year.
Michigan law requires schools to measure student growth at least in part using state tests.
But obviously, there are no previous M-STEP results to compare this year’s tests with, so the memo basically says that schools should do the best they can without that element.
“Michigan’s transition this spring to the M-STEP … does not allow for state assessment data to be used in local determinations of student growth for this school year,” Forward says in the memo. “Districts may use locally-administered assessments that are rigorous and comparable across schools within the district … and apply this approach to all educators in the 2014-2015 year. ”
