By Staff
The reporter responsible for the article that ran in the Jackson Citizen Patriot's newspaper last week about the MEAP testing released a statement saying he is sorry for causing the problems he did.
Because of the article, which contained information about the writing portion of the test, every single fifth and sixth grade student in Michigan now has to retake that portion of the MEAP.
While this reporter has cause quite a stir, it's important to understand that he did not deliberately do this. He was only doing his job.
In the statement, the reporter claimed he visited an elementary school after requesting to do a story about MEAP testing.
The reporter said he told the school principal that a photographer would come by during the test, but only shoot photos of the kids testing through the window (a state rule that the reporter knew needed to be followed). He said the principal agreed.
It was later discovered that the teacher of the classroom which the reporter interviewed had invited the photographer into his class to take photos of the children just before they started the test. These photos were published.
The reporter explained he followed typical protocol when attending a school for any media work – he signed in at the front desk, said hi to the principal and asked for directions to the classroom.
When he arrived to the classroom he had permission to interview, he said the door was open and many of the children were talking. He assumed the test was over, but then I saw some students still taking the test. He waited outside while the students finished up.
He explained that the teacher came into the hall and the two talked mostly about another subject other than the MEAP testing. The reporter then asked the teacher if he could talk to a couple of students after the test. The teacher agreed.
The reporter explained that he wasn't given any guidelines on what questions were off limits. Maybe the teacher didn't know either.
The reporter said that after most of the students had left the classroom, he walked back in and stood near the door where the teacher struck up a conversation with some of the students. There were still two students taking the test.
"I thought it was odd he was letting me in the classroom and letting the kids chat among themselves while kids were taking the test," the reporter said in his statement.
Given his knowledge of the teacher – an 11-year veteran teacher (with known aspirations of being a principal) and the Jackson High School's head basketball coach – the reporter figured it must be OK for him to be in the classroom during testing.
The teacher asked one student what writing prompt he had, revealing two questions that were on the test.
The child, a fifth grader, corrected his teacher, saying fifth graders had one question and sixth graders had the other. The reporter wrote down what they were saying, but understood the teacher may have mixed up which students have what tests because he teaches two separate grade levels.
This is where the problem occurred. The reporter actually printed the questions on the MEAP test and information the students gave on how they answered.
After that, the reporter said that he walked back into the hall to catch a couple of students to talk to them about the MEAP.
He asked two students how the test was going and they both said fine.
He then asked them about the writing test and they both confirmed with the reporter what the teacher and the other student had said were the essay questions.
One student told the reporter he wrote about his mom. He said he decided he could use that for his story.
"I feel bad about the problems this simple feature story has caused. I apologize for any problems this story created, but I'm not an expert on MEAP rules and I rely heavily on school officials to tell me what the classroom access boundaries are," the reporter said.
This is an unfortunate situation. The reporter may not have known the rules or guidelines as to what he could and could not do. That should have been the responsibility of the school system to tell him what his limitations were. Maybe they had no idea he was going to publish questions that were on the test.
Whatever the case, the questions were made public to everyone, even those who did not take the test yet. If this situation was not caught, hundreds of students could have been aware of the questions on the test and would have had time to prepare for them.
It's important for parents and students to understand that the portion of the test being taken over is not a large section and will only require and hour or two to finish. If this action had not been taken, Michigan's Department of Education could have faced major problems or students possibly could have been required to take the entire MEAP test over again.