Some Students To Receive New MEAP Math Scores

LANSING (AP) - Some students will get new Michigan Education Assessment Program math scores after a problem with some questions on the exam.

Students in grades 4, 7 and 8, as well as special education students in grades 3-8, can expect new scores, and the scores could go up or down, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News reported. The tests included some questions that state officials had promised schools would not be included.

New reports are expected to be sent to schools by the end of June. Overall school scores also likely will be affected. The Michigan Department of Education will absorb the costs of score adjustment, spokeswoman Jan Ellis said.

Students took the exams last year and scores were released in February.

Local educators told the department about issues with the questions, officials said. Many teachers had been told "you no longer need to teach these specific skills," said Joseph Martineau, deputy superintendent for accountability services at the education department.

Michigan is moving from its current standards for schools to Common Core Standards, a set of expectations to be used across the country. Martineau said the overall impact of the score changes will be minimal but that the state had to make the correction.

"We wanted to make sure we were honoring the commitment to the schools," Martineau said.

The rescoring affects only those school districts that opted to make an early transition to more rigorous MEAP testing during the latest round of tests. Martineau said those districts' MEAP tests had questions from the older, standard version of the MEAP.

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