It looks like the Michigan Educational Assessment Program, or MEAP, tests have one less problem.
The Michigan Department of Treasury, which oversees the program, learned from its mistake last year, when officials released the names of 71 schools being investigated for cheating on the state’s standardized tests. This year, Treasury Department officials decided to keep that list under wraps while those schools are investigated.
Officials said test graders submitted 44 cases of possible cheating this year - down from 484 potential cases one year ago. Last year’s suspected cases were narrowed to 71 and released to the public before schools were even notified of the investigation.
It’s nice to see the Treasury Department - the obvious department to oversee an education program - has been able to reduce the number of problems associated with the test. But ask any college student who attended public school in Michigan and the list of complaints about standardized tests will only get longer.
Some complain about the writing or administration of the test, and some find fault all the way up to the grading. Others believe it is administered by the wrong department - one that focuses primarily on financial concerns, rather than education.
But for the 51 schools wrongly accused of cheating a year ago - 20 were found to have engaged in some wrongdoing, although they were not punished - the cheating snafu probably ranks at the top of their lists of grievances. The black eye delivered to these schools is a blow that was not only avoidable, but unnecessary.
It damaged the reputations of those schools and the state’s testing program.
What the state did last year was akin to accusing someone of a crime before there is any evidence of guilt.
Such an accusation is absolutely reprehensible.
The steps taken to improve the test and ensure its integrity are moves in the right direction, although more needs to be done to make certain that the kinds of problems schools are experiencing are not repeated.
We hope officials can show they are able to clean up the mess from last year, while fixing the problems that led to such accusations in the first place.
