What Can, Should and Is Being Done About NHS's Failing Grade
March 2004

In late January of this year, the Feds announced the schools nation-wide that didn’t meet the "Adequate Yearly Progress" requirements. Four hundred and twelve metro-Detroit schools were on this list, including West Bloomfield, Farmington, Troy, Northville, and Novi.  Normally, being in a category with those five schools isn’t bad company.  That's why it came as such a shock to many communities, including Novi, which is well known as one of the top school districts in the country.

71 area schools flat-out failed the test, and 412 “showed a need for improvement.”  So questions arose: If 412 schools are failing, who’s not failing? And if more schools are failing than not failing, is it really the schools that “need improvement,” or is it the government’s grading process? Over one quarter of the 3,472 schools in Michigan failed the 2003 government test.  Many of those same schools posted exceptional grades on the MEAP tests.
 
Needless to say, residents of Novi and students attending Novi High School were confused by the announcement, coming just two months after the district’s MEAP test scores were released that showed Novi finished well above the state average.  It turns out, it wasn’t the MEAP scores, but rather the number of people that took the MEAP that got Novi High School the bad grade.  Simply put, less than the required 95% of students took the MEAP in its entirety at NHS. This new information didn’t seem to surprise the students, but it left the People of Novi wanting answers.
 
You’ll be glad to hear Novi High School is already taking action to ensure a passing grade on next year’s exam.  Earlier this month, a list was sent throughout the school containing over one hundred seniors who either didn’t start, or didn’t finish, the MEAP test their junior year.  Along with it came an announcement: starting this year, if you haven’t taken the MEAP test, you won’t graduate.  In a school where unpaid library book fees postpone your graduation, you’d think this wouldn’t come as such a surprise. Think again -- students were enraged.  An assembly was held to plan times for the MEAP to be taken, again.  The school came to a decision that the seniors will join the juniors in taking the test this year. 

While this is all fine and dandy, it still doesn’t answer the question: why did over 5% of Novi students not take the test in the first place?  The answer is simple.  There is a well-known loop-hole in the MEAP test.  Well, at least there was a loop-hole.
 
Students have always known that the Social Studies portion of the test “doesn’t count.”  And in case you weren’t aware, students don’t take this test because they enjoy it.  They are bribed with a hefty sum of scholarship money, which serves as the only material incentive to show up and actually try on the test.  However, the Social Studies test doesn’t count towards that scholarship

The stereotypical teenage student is always jumping at the opportunity to be lazy.  Put two and two together, and you get students who, rather than wake up two hours earlier one day of their junior year to read a few maps and interpret agricultural graphs, decided to sleep in and go to breakfast before school.  Novi High School’s response to this?  Let’s hope they’re nourished and well-rested this year, because they’ll be waking up dark and early with the juniors, to complete every section of the MEAP they didn’t finish.

From now on, Novi High School students have a new incentive to take all of the MEAP test.  They can either take it, or not graduate; an incentive that is sure to put NHS over that 95% mark.  Though this year’s punishment may seem harsh on the seniors, no one ever told them they didn’t have to take it the first time around.  The Novi Community School District is setting a great example by spending less time complaining, and more time getting the job done.  An example that should be followed by this year’s seniors and juniors taking the MEAP.

With the first failing grade in the history of the school, NHS might have lost its 4.0, but expect straight As on next year's report card… 

(c) 2004 the Novi Information Network