July 7, 2008

LANSING ? Michigan is one of 10 states approved to participate in a national pilot program that will take into consideration a student's yearly academic growth to help determine Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

The United States Department of Education (USED) approved Michigan's application to participate in a Growth Model pilot in its continuous effort to adjust and improve the implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.

"This will help recognize the hard work being done in schools where the students may not be reaching the required proficiency levels on our state MEAP and MI-Access tests, but are making significant educational progress every year," said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan.

The Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test is given to general education students, and MI-Access is the state's alternate test given to students with significant cognitive disabilities.

Three key features of Michigan's model include:

• Using performance level change (first reported for fall 2007) to track students performance from year to year;
• Measuring whether students who are not yet proficient are "on track" to becoming proficient within three years; and
• Determining that if students are "on track" toward becoming proficient within three years, those students will count toward schools making AYP even if they are not yet proficient.

Identifying students who are "on track" toward proficiency within three years will apply only to grades 4-8 for the state's English Language Arts (ELA) and math tests. Those are the only two subjects required by NCLB to be tested and used to determine AYP. Third graders will not be identified as being "on track" since that is the first time those students' achievement is measured.

The Growth Model calculations will be used to determine this year's AYP results. Preliminary AYP results already had been issued to elementary and middle schools for the 2007-2008 school year. As a result of this recent approval by USED to use the Growth Model, the Michigan Department of Education will add the "on track" students into the AYP calculation system over the next several weeks to create final AYP determinations. This will result in a modest number of schools that originally had not made AYP ultimately making AYP in the final determination. No schools will be affected negatively by considering student progress toward proficiency.

The other states approved for the Growth Model pilot program are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee.