WDET talk show host Craig Fahle interviewed Ford School professor of education policy Brian A. Jacob about the recent Michigan Education Assessment Program results and their implications for Michigan.
Higher standards for the MEAP this year resulted in a dramatically lower percentage of passing students.
"I think it's important to understand there's nothing that significantly changed (in) the test itself," Jacob said. "It was just a decision of changing the cut scores, the level at which a student would have to score to be proficient or not."
"It's hard to know what you need to do to get better if you don't have a good, honest sense of how you're currently doing," he added.
Jacob and Fahle also discussed the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, the pros and cons of national education standards, and whether the MEAP is an accurate gauge of school effectiveness, among other issues.
"I think it kind of gives us an accurate sense of where we are, and in Michigan's case, especially in math," Jacob said of the new MEAP standards. Only 37 percent of students in grades 3-8 passed the math portion. "It made us realize that we have a lot more work to do than we than we thought we did before."
[Listen to the full podcast here.]