Michigan Assessment Program Thwarts College Opportunity

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

Students looking at life after high school often consider college, and applying to college can sometimes be challenging. In Michigan, it comes as a surprise to many that some of those roadblocks exist in the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, the tests given each spring to high school juniors to assess student learning. M-STEP was considered one of leading-edge assessment tools when it debuted in 2014-15, but like all tools, it requires maintenance in order to stay sharp and effective—and when it comes to college access, there are three key ways M-STEP needs to be updated, and soon:

Elimination of Transcript Requirement

State law currently requires M-STEP scores to be posted on student transcripts. This includes the SAT portion of M-STEP, a test that used to be required by nearly all four-year colleges as part of the requirements for admission. But many four-year colleges no longer require test scores, leaving it up to the students to decide if their scores are strong enough to be included in their college applications.

State law doesn’t give Michigan public school students that choice—they have to send their transcripts to colleges, so the colleges get their SAT scores, even if they are low. This means some Michigan students are giving colleges information the student doesn’t want to send—information that could put them at a disadvantage when applying to college. This also means that students from outside Michigan enjoy an advantage when applying to Michigan colleges that don’t require test scores.

Elimination of SAT essay Evidence-Based Reading and Writing

M-STEP also includes the SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Exam, a test that was part of the national SAT when M-STEP started. This test was intended to give colleges some idea of a student’s ability to write at the college level by requiring a writing sample from all students.

It didn’t take long for most colleges to realize that the writing sample in this part of the test conveyed little information about a student’s ability to do college-level writing, and many colleges began dropping this requirement.

Today, Michigan high school students are one, if not the only, group of students still submitting these scores to colleges — and even though the colleges don’t want the scores, it’s hard for them to unsee a test score that’s submitted. In addition, high school English departments use these results to fine-tune their curriculum decisions, even though colleges feel the results have no bearing on a student’s ability to write.

Elimination of WorkKeys

ACT’s WorkKeys is a tool designed to assess some job skills. No college requires WorkKeys as part of the admissions process, but it was included as part of M-STEP to give students some insights into their vocational options.

Unfortunately, the administration of WorkKeys in spring of the junior year has not delivered on that promise. Since WorkKeys results aren’t available until fall of the student’s senior year, school counselors report that WorkKeys plays little, if any, meaningful role in shaping students’ plans for life after high school, since they’ve already planned their senior year schedules and have been working for up to a year with school counselors on their postsecondary plans.

It's important to measure student progress in school, so long as that assessment occurs in meaningful ways that create opportunities for better, and more, learning. It’s time to put Michigan back in the lead among states promoting meaningful postsecondary planning, and these changes to M-STEP are a strong step toward achieving that goal.

Mental Health Counseling: Time to Assess

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The COVID crisis threw a lot of things into disarray, from families to schools to school counseling curricula. Eighteen months or online school/in-person-no-wait-online school first required counselors to figure out how to put their counseling curriculum online, then sent them scattering when some districts seemed to arbitrarily decide when to put school online, and when to hold it in person. In addition, many counseling offices put together post-COVID mental health programming that was needed to help students remember how to “do” school in person, and how to move past the isolating effects of the pandemic.

It's hard to believe 5 years have passed since then, but time has indeed marched on, and many counseling curricula are looking like the front hall closet after a long winter—full of mismatched boots and unpaired socks that are taking up a lot of space, but not doing an awful lot.

We’re close enough to spring, so let’s do some curriculum cleaning, shall we?

Reinforcing the idea of a school counseling curriculum You certainly know that there is content and skill sets you want all students to have before leaving your school, but this may still be news to classroom teachers, parents, administrators, or even students. If COVID made you take out the messaging that pointed out that counseling has a curriculum, just like math and English, it’s time to get that message back out there.

Considering the key elements of your mental health offerings I once worked in a school that had an incredible number of parents who worked the 2-10:30 shift at the local car assembly plant, leaving lots of students to put themselves to bed while parents worked, and get themselves up while parents slept. Your community may have special needs as well, on top of the usual developmental issues your students face. If you’re not sure, now is the time for a needs assessment to make sure you’re offering the help that will help.

Is there overlap with community mental health services? Local mental health services aren’t as plentiful as they used to be, but some municipalities, states, places of worship, and community organizations are still committed to helping people live mentally health lives. This is as good a time as any to see what services they offer that may overlap with yours—and if they exist, whether you can break free and offer other programming to expand your services, while referring students out to the community programs they might need.

Do you have personnel or professional development needs? As you focus your services on your school’s needs, you may find there is a skill set missing among your mental health personnel. The data from a needs assessment provides ideal evidence for an administrator to give you the training, resources, or extra helper needed to meet a demonstrated need. Now is the time to ask.

Consider how you’re formatting your services Classroom presentations on bullying may have met the need pre-COVID, but your data may suggest there’s a need for a more focused approach with some students. School assemblies, classroom presentations, afterschool groups and more all have something to offer to meet mental health needs. See where the data guides you, and go there.

The big question Throughout this process, keep asking “What will success look like?” No curriculum is worth the trouble if you just keep teaching it without knowing if students are growing. What that looks, or feels, or sounds like is important to consider now—and so is how you’ll be able to measure it.

A Primer on the US Department of Education

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

The US Department of Education (known as ED) has been in the media spotlight the last two weeks with an intensity that only compares to the FAFSA foul-ups of last year. Just when it seemed like ED was going back to business as usual, along comes a new president who actually isn’t a new president, and ED is getting more discussion than the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl appearance.

As is always the case with such white-hot social attention, there’s a lot of news out there, a lot of gossip out there, and a lot of hoping out there—hope that ED is on its way out, and hope that ED is going to somehow survive all this. As you make your way through the morning headlines, here are some key ideas to help you sort fact from fiction, and hope from reality.

This Trump administration is different than the last one The 2017 Trump team featured a president who cared Not. One. Whit. about education, with K-12 getting a whopping one sentence in his first State of the Union. Between now and then, someone has convinced the new Grover Cleveland that K-12 is a threat to the American way of life, an example of government overreach, or both. As a result, Team Trump II now wants to clip the department’s wings and influence, any way they can.

Closing ED will be difficult Federal departments are created by Congress, with bills that specify exactly what the new division is supposed to do. That generally means no other part of the federal government can do what Congress wants this part to do. It also means Congress is the only group that can put it out of business.

And yet… Just like a school counseling office, government divisions often end up doing things that aren’t in their job description. ED is no different, offering programming and other services that, it could be argued, are an extension of their mandate, but not an essential element,

That’s where Executive Orders come in. Congress may have created ED, but the president runs it—and the boss can come in at any time and change, add or delete the “other duties as assigned” to ED in any way he’d like. That’s part of what’s going on now, and there is legitimate concern these orders could limit ED’s influence. An Executive Order can also be used to direct Congress to eliminate ED. That may be coming.

Layoffs and Leaves The president can also manage personnel, much like your superintendent does. This can take the form of layoffs, if they feel there isn’t (or won’t be) enough work to do; calls for employees to consider resigning, with the implied promise of layoffs if there aren’t enough resignations; and administrative leaves, an action which takes people out of the office, but not off the payroll. Administrative leaves are the most curious tool in the leadership toolbox, since they don’t affect the budget, but simply keep someone out of the office. It’s generally used to keep dissidents at bay, so they can’t organize any opposition to actions taken by the boss—and those have indeed happened at ED.

DOGE and ED The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has made its presence known at ED, and while DOGE can have access to all kinds of databases and personalized information, its role at ED has, so far, been mostly structural—what can they cut, what can they offload to another division. Efforts to access databases at other departments have made the headlines; if this happens at ED, the same is likely to occur.