June 13, 2011

Dear Governor Snyder,

I give you high marks as our new Governor for exhibiting a relentlessly can-do spirit and viewing challenges as opportunities. I wish, however, that you exhibited that same enthusiasm for communicating accurate data about schools. "Do no harm" should be the first rule of public service. To that end, I feel compelled to point out that the State’s plan to provide students and community members with misleading or patently inaccurate data is harmful. More specifically, your insistence upon using ACT’s questionable "College-Ready" Benchmark1 and making it a "Best Practice" for schools while continually asserting that our high schools are failing our students and our communities is irresponsible for a variety of reasons.

Examples abound, but I will use a particularly illustrative instance from just last year. One of our students, now in University of Michigan's selective Health Science curriculum (pre-med), was labeled by the ACT’s "College-Ready" Benchmark as not "College-Ready"…in Biology of all things. Her mother said, "If (her daughter) had known this, it would have devastated her."

ACT's own data show the predictive accuracy of its "College Readiness" Benchmark as a coin flip - 50% of students deemed "College-Ready" and "not College-Ready" go on to get an A or a B in a given subject in college.

Despite the dubiousness of this "College-Ready" Benchmark as a predictive tool, the State has adopted it as a metric for schools. Worse yet, if school districts comply with the so-called "Best Practices" recently approved by the Legislature, our district will be mandated to post these "Readiness" numbers on our website. This harms children. Who would ever diminish children’s expectations of their ability by using such a slip-shod predictor? The same goes for their belief in their school’s ability to prepare them.

You have stated, "Anything less than 100 percent (College Readiness) is not good enough." How can schools succeed if "Readiness" is a coin-flip? Berkley High School is a prime example. Repeatedly recognized as a "Public Elite", Berkley High School is nowhere near the 100% mark, yet:

The Class of 2011 was offered admission to over 130 colleges and universities such as Harvard, Boston University, Case Western Reserve, Duke, George Washington, Baylor, Washington University, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Yale, just to name a few.

Clearly, a huge number of Berkley students are ready for college even if they aren’t "College-Ready" students when:

o 81% of Berkley High applicants (over 50) were accepted to University of Michigan last year

o 89% of its applicants (again over 50) were accepted to Michigan State University this year.

Berkley High School is not alone. Oakland County boasts some of the finest public high schools in the nation, and these schools range from 30% to 73% on ACT’s "Readiness" metric. Persisting in using "College Readiness" defies reason and also undermines the public's belief in schools' efficacy. "Readiness" as a metric of school quality is simultaneously a coin-flip and very easily misused.

Very much to my surprise and chagrin, at the recent Mackinac Policy Conference you said again and again that Michigan has "238 high schools with no 'College-Ready' students". This conveys a clear message that our public schools are failing our children. This simply is not the case. Oakland County has 23 schools of those 238 schools with no "College-Ready" students.

A look at those 23 Oakland County Schools with no "College-Ready" students is revealing:

1 (Closed)
2 Schools for adjudicated youth
4 Charter schools
14 Alternative schools
1 Special high school with all students from other districts
1 Regular high school with 113 students with college-reportable ACT scores
23

Clearly, I'm missing something. I question citing the 238 schools, most of which suffer urban ills, as a launchpad for policy for all Michigan school districts. These "College-Ready" and "238 failing high schools" talking points are used repeatedly to justify an action. That action is to force a supposed cure upon our high-performing suburban district for an imagined illness.

I would suggest that the State and its leadership follow these Best Practices:
1. Use accurate data to make decisions
2. Do not micro-manage other units of government
3. One size does not fit all
4. Govern wisely and avoid supplanting local wisdom with state wisdom

Attached, I have included a White Paper from Dr. Ernest A. Bauer, Ph.D., Director of Research Evaluation and Assessment Programs, Oakland Intermediate School District. This paper has been previously delivered to your office and other elected officials in Lansing. Again, the question is, why would the State continue to use the erroneous and misleading ACT "College Readiness" as a benchmark?

To be clear, I am as interested in accountability as anyone and am fully aware that some schools are not serving students. The proposed metric, however, helps neither those that do serve students well nor those that do not serve students well. Finally, "College-Ready" and "238" are just recent examples of inaccurate "data" about schools coming from the highest levels of our state government. I would like to reconfirm my commitment to being part of a solution to challenges schools face. I am available to discuss this "any time", "any place", and "any way".

Sincerely,
Michael V. Simeck
Superintendent