Birmingham High School Students Break Even on 2013 Michigan Merit Exam Scores

This story was written by Brooke Tajer and Kristen Skladd.

While there had been a four-year upward trend of student performance on the Michigan Merit Exam, there was a dip in scores in the past year, according to results released Monday by the Michigan Department of Education.

The overall composite scores for Michigan’s Class of 2013 on the ACT college-entrance exam showed declines as well, the MDE reported.

Locally, the same trend was seen. Birmingham Public Schools’ students deemed more proficient on the MME, a test which aims to showcase academic achievement, in 2012 than in 2013 in the areas of mathematics and reading. However, the students’ scores remained the same in the writing and science categories, and even slightly increased in social studies.

Birmingham 11th graders who took the test last spring averaged three points lower in the two sections listed above. Students showed the most proficiency in social studies – 58 percent, up from 56 percent in 2012. 78 percent of students tested proficient in writing with 46 percent proficient in science.

“Students at Birmingham Public Schools continue to show strong performance on the ACT as related to their peers in Oakland County,” said Dr. Daniel Nerad, Superintendent for Birmingham Public Schools. “For the results from this past spring, our students are second in the county for ACT English, second in the county for reading, third in the county for writing, third in the county for mathematics, and third in the county for science.”

“Given the yearly fluctuation in ACT scores, we have dipped slightly across content areas,” adds Dr. Nerad.  “We are currently waiting for additional reports to be released by ACT and will investigate why these trends occurred.”

Still the Birmingham students far outpaced 11th graders across the state whose best performance – 54 percent proficient – was in reading, down two percentage points from 2012.

Since the exams tests only one grade level, officials say it’s difficult to pinpoint why there are increases and declines year to year.

“There is no system in place that does 9th, 10th and 11th grade with progression so you’ll get anomalies like this with no clear rationale behind it other than it’s a different cohort of student,” said Jan Ellis, a spokeswoman for the MDE. “Of course, we’re hoping long-term the trend continues to going up.”

On the ACT, Michigan students averaged a composite score of 19.6, up slightly from 19.5 in 2012. In Birmingham, students scored better than the state with an average 23.6 on the ACT. But even that score was down .2 points from a year ago. In fact, in each subject on the test, students at Groves High School raised their scores, while students at Seaholm saw their scores dip from a year ago.

Birmingham Public Schools MME (percent proficient)

Math

2013: 60

2012: 63

Science

2013: 46

2012: 46

Reading

2013: 76

2012: 79

Writing

2013: 78

2012: 78

Social Studies

2013: 58

2012: 56

Birmingham Public Schools ACT (average)

2013: 23.6

2012: 23.8

Statewide MME (percent proficient)

Math

2013: 28.6

2012: 29.1

Science

2013: 25.7

2012: 25.8

Reading

2013: 53.5

2012: 55.9

Writing

2013: 49.3

2012: 49.4

Social Studies

2013: 38.6

2012: 40.5

Statewide ACT (average)

2013: 19.7

2012: 19.6

Source: Michigan Department of Education