Department of Education to Appeal
Withholding of Federal Funds
State Laws Conflicted with Federal Requirements
January 25, 2005
LANSING – The Michigan Department of Education will appeal a federal decision to withhold $125,000 in federal funds for issuing the state high school Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) reports after the beginning of the school year.
The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law requires states to publish AYP report cards for all schools prior to the start of each school year. Michigan did publish the report cards for the elementary and middle schools prior to the start of the 2004-05 school year. High school report cards were delayed, however, because state laws at the time required late-Spring testing and an appeals process that pushed the whole process back.
The state Legislature has since enacted changes to the law that will allow for earlier testing for high school students that will allow AYP reports to be issued prior to the start of school next fall.
"Our hands were tied by state laws that conflicted with the requirements of the federal law," explained the state’s Chief Academic Officer Dr. Jeremy Hughes. "The U.S. Department of Education was informed and well aware of Michigan’s predicament and that we have changed our law to help comply with federal requirements. Despite continued dialogue with the USDOE on this issue, it is unfortunate that they still felt it necessary to penalize us for issues out of our control."
As is customary, it is anticipated that the federal Title I funds in question will be released to the state once it has demonstrated compliance with the law. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Watkins is meeting today in his Lansing office with the Midwest regional representative of the USDOE to discuss this and other educational issues of importance to Michigan schools.
Watkins noted that the Department was successful in working with the education committees of the state House and Senate to effect a change in the Revised School Code and State School Aid Act that would expand the end-of-school year testing window for high schools from 30 days to 90 days. This year, high school MEAP testing will begin in March instead of May.
After previous discussions with legislative leaders regarding this conflict between state and federal law, the necessary legislation was introduced on September 22, 2004 and was signed into law by the Governor on November 4, 2004.
"For a bill to go from introduction to being signed into law in six weeks is almost record time," Watkins said. "The legislature recognized our urgent need for these changes and went into action. We presented this good news to the USDOE as evidence of our Department’s efforts to do whatever we needed to do to comply with NCLB."
Until last fall, the state’s Revised School Code; the State School Aid Act as well as the State’s Merit Award law had required that the high school assessments be administered no earlier than the last thirty (30) days of the school year. The high school MEAP tests were therefore administered for the past seven years in the month of May. The results of the May 2004 high school testing were delivered to the Department of Education from its outside test contractor at the beginning of August.
The Department’s appropriation law (2003 PA 145, Section 222, 2004 PA 346, Section 212) requires that before any report cards are issued, schools and districts must be given an opportunity to appeal their AYP designation. Furthermore, the Department’s appropriation law requires that, once appeals have been received, the Department has up to thirty (30) days in which to render decisions on the appeals and that no public listing of schools’ or districts’ AYP status may be issued until all appeals have been settled.
After the receipt of high school MEAP test results on August 1, it took approximately two weeks for the state Department of Treasury’s Merit Scholarship Office to match student results and it took another week for the Department of Education to use these test results to develop preliminary report cards for high schools. The Treasury’s Merit Scholarship Office houses and maintains the MEAP test scores of high school students to determine if they qualify for a Michigan Merit Scholarship.
These preliminary report cards were issued to schools on August 25, 2004, and schools were given a two-week window in which to file appeals. The appeals window closed on September 15, 2004.
The Department’s Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability then began to process the appeals. This consumed the 30 days allowed by the Department’s appropriation law, taking it into mid-October.
To accelerate the notification of those high schools not making AYP, the Department prioritized decisions on appeals from the high school that are Title I schools. Letters were sent to those schools districts on October 12, 2004 informing them of the AYP status of these schools and requesting them to immediately begin implementing applicable NCLB sanctions.
Report cards for all Michigan public high schools were issued publicly on November 4, 2004.
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