By Staff
LANSING -- A great majority of the state's secondary school principals responding to a Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals (MASSP) survey say the Michigan Educational Assessment Program – High School Test (MEAP-HST) for high school students should be replaced with a nationally recognized exam.
The state-sponsored MEAP-HST, they say, is too costly, too time-consuming, of little value to most students and produces results that are largely meaningless as a measure of school performance.
MASSP conducted two electronic surveys of its 2,084 members in late February and early March.
More than three-quarters of the principals who responded to the first survey said the MEAP-HST should be replaced with the ACT Assessment (a nationally recognized college entrance exam) and ACT WorkKeys (which measures work readiness skills).
Only 11 percent expressed satisfaction with the MEAP-HST.
MASSP is advocating that Michigan switch to the ACT/WorkKeys combination -- to be called the "Michigan Merit Exam" -- in 2005 as a superior tool for assessing the performance of high schools and their students statewide.
Approximately 75 percent of Michigan high school students already take the ACT each year -- voluntarily and at their parents' expense -- to determine their eligibility for college admission.
Students can also use their ACT results to qualify for state-sponsored scholarships known as the Michigan Merit Awards.
In contrast, the MEAP-HST is not recognized as an entrance exam by any college or university and there is no incentive for students to take it, other than to qualify for a Michigan Merit Award scholarship.
Further, students may retake the MEAP-HST -- at state expense -- as many as six times.