Northville Students Show Some Gains in MEAP Scores

Northville Public Schools has, as in past years, performed well above the state average on the Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) test, according to MEAP data released Wednesday morning.

The district made more gains in specific subject areas than it took losses when comparing the 2011 and 2010 numbers. Some of the biggest gains were in elementary school mathematics and reading.

"We feel good overall as a district on our MEAP results," said Robert Behnke, assistant superintendent for instructional services. "While we are not 100 percent proficient in all areas, as a district we continue to be a leading school district within the state for high performing students."

Cut scores were a factor in the results this year. The cut scores – the passing scores that distinguish between whether a student is advanced, proficient, partially proficient or not proficient in certain subjects - were adopted by the State Board of Education in September 2010. With the more rigorous cut scores, students must get roughly 65 percent of the answers correct to “pass” the state test, instead of only 39 percent that was the previous benchmark.

"With the new MEAP cut scores announced early in the fall we knew there would be a decrease in scores from previous years," Behnke said. "These results help us prioritize our areas or concern and allows us to evolve our district and building school improvement plans to impact student achievement."

Still, Northville saw a few drops in 2011 from 2010 of five percentage points or less. The most notable drop is in eighth grade math, which each fell by about 5.5 percentage points in 2011 from 2010.

"There are always concerns when scores fall over the previous school year," Behnke said. "As we move forward, item analysis plays a large role in analyzing what areas we fell shot on and how to address that both within this school year and for next year to ensure the instructional gap is closed for our students so their performance can be improved on the next assessment, be it MEAP or NWEA, or classroom assessments."

Here are the proficiency percentages for each grade level tested in Northville, alongside the state proficiency percentage, listed by subject:

MEAP reading scores

MEAP math scores

Here's a look, grade by grade, at the percentage of students proficient in the math portion of the test.

MEAP writing scores

Here's a look, grade by grade, at the percentage of students proficient in the writing portion of the test.

MEAP science scores

Here's a look, grade by grade, at the percentage of students proficient in the science portion of the test.

MEAP social studies scores

Here's a look, grade by grade, at the percentage of students proficient in the social studies portion of the test.