It was the AAPS school board’s choice to purchase NWEA testing, and it was not purchased for teacher evaluation. Here is an exchange from a May 30, 2011 Ann Arbor Chronicle report of an AAPS board discussion [link]:

AAPS interim deputy superintendent of instruction, Lee Ann Dickinson-Kelley, was on hand to answer questions during the second briefing on the proposed purchase of the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) assessment by AAPS.

Thomas began the discussion by asking a number of clarifying questions to address public concerns regarding the assessment, and Dickinson-Kelley answered them. He asked how long it would take for students in grades K-2 to complete (20-30 min); whether the test is age-appropriate (Yes); and, whether it replaces the MEAP (No). He also questioned how results will be used, and whether or not they will be useful for assessing teachers. . .

Regarding its uses, Dickinson-Kelley said the NWEA test would be used to assess students, not teachers. She reported that guidance would be offered to teacher-leaders and principals about how to adjust instructional practice to test results. . .

Baskett then asked about the connection between the NWEA assessment and the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP). Dickinson-Kelley said that the district’s use of the NWEA tool will prepare AAPS for the replacement of the MEAP with a national assessment by 2013 or 2014, since NWEA uses national instead of state standards.

Some board members may have approved it in the hope that it might allow the district to use it down the road for teacher evaluation–even though, at that time, the answer was that no, it wasn’t to be used for teacher evaluations. In fact, when asked now, school board members have different accounts as to whether they thought it would/could/should be used for teacher evaluation. Perhaps most critically, NWEA itself says that it was designed for student evaluation rather than teacher evaluation, and that it does not have statistical validity for the purpose of teacher evaluation.

It was entirely the AAPS school board’s choice (with the enthusiastic support of the administration) to purchase NWEA testing materials. The board may have been misled as to the technological compatibility, because Lee Ann Dickinson-Kelly is referenced in an Ann Arbor Chronicle article as saying that, “AAPS had to identify an assessment process that is compatible with its current technology infrastructure, and the district has identified the NWEA assessment tool as ideal” (Chronicle, 5/17/2011).

Nine months later, when it appeared that AAPS technology couldn’t handle the NWEA, even for elementary school students, I was told that NWEA had warned AAPS that the state of AAPS technology meant that the district might not be able to handle it technologically speaking, and in fact the need for updated technology for the NWEA test became a rationale for the technology bond. [Note: there were new technology and curricular staff in place nine months after the decision had been made, so I'm not sure who knew what when.]

It’s not a requirement to have the NWEA. It’s not mandated like the MEAP. Whatever assessment becomes mandated (and there will be one) will probably replace both the MEAP and NWEA. At which point our district will have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that isn’t necessary. We have entirely too much testing going on in the schools now, particularly in the fall. Testing time takes away from instruction time.

I will say, over and over again until I am blue in the face, the district could drop NWEA if it chose to. And if the district doesn’t drop NWEA because it finds it useful, then it should drop some of the other testing and evaluation methods, like SRI, FastMath, other reading assessments. . . and give that time back to the teachers to actually teach.

I understand all the added expenses that the BOE has faced as unfunded mandates. They are certainly challenging but they are not the reasons for the structural deficit. The structural deficit is caused by the structure of the organization. Education is a decentralized activity. Yet the Ann Arbor Public Schools
remains a centralized organization, much like the old Soviet Union. No amount of money will be enough to
fund such a dysfunctional organization. No effective organization with more than 30 different operating units budgets from the Board table. Effective organizations of this size delegate budgeting to the operating level and the Board reviews the overall annual financial plan. Zero based budgeting is a waste of time unless the budget decisions are made by the right people, who in this case would be the building principals. In the past I have been told by people in Balas that principals were incapable of performing budgeting. I don’t believe this assertion. I do believe the answer is in changing the model of how the Ann Arbor Schools
operates.

Hence, doing yet more with less and less.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree that education funding is in a bad place, and seems to be getting worse rather than better, but attempts to blame the problem on all-day kindergarten strike me as seriously misguided.

Bob should be somewhat aware of these things, but if he is not, I am more than happy to spend more time with him or others to help create a better understanding of more of our current funding situation.

We are also transitioning to zero-based budgeting – something I advocated for last year, and something Bob was also interested in. This should help address some of the concerns that Bob sort of eludes to, but doesn’t quite articulate. That still won’t compensate for the approximate 10% general operating fund reductions that we’ve been experiencing every year. We have a structural deficit – meaning our funding model is the issue. We can’t ‘spend down’ our way out of this. The fix is in addressing the model.