Day One In The Books

With the arrival of March this year, we have the onset of the MME, or Michigan Merit Exam. Today was the first day of state testing of high school juniors, with all members of the class of 2012 taking the ACT. From my personal observations, it appears we are off to a good start.

Students arrived on time and were ready to go, and as has been the case at South, we were blessed once again with very good attendance. That means the "make-up" testing window two weeks from now will not require a great deal of adult oversight.

It's amazing how standardized testing has changed over the years, especially when compared to high school administration of the MEAP not too many years ago. This battery of tests is taken much more seriously by students, and the accountability for adults in schools is dramatically different than it used to be. And more changes are on the horizon.

Wholesale changes will be implemented across the state by 2014, but we will begin to see changes next fall at the elementary and middle level with more rigorous testing. The new tests will be more closely aligned to the ACT than the old MEAP tests. What the Department of Education discovered over the years is that the MEAP was not a good predictor of "college readiness". And college readiness is the new standard, much more so than just graduating with a high school diploma.

I am hopeful the serious approach that was observable today translates into another class of strong scores. Like it or not, the reputation of our school district and community is closely tied to standardized test performance.