After News Article on Test, Michigan Orders Retesting - New York Times
DETROIT, Oct. 12 — Michigan’s Department of Education is making thousands of fifth- and sixth-graders retake a part of the state’s standardized writing test because a newspaper published a brief article about the test that revealed the topics of two questions.
The retesting is expected to cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” a spokesman for the department, Martin Ackley, said Friday, at a time when Michigan is entangled in its worst-ever financial crisis. State lawmakers this month narrowly avoided a government shutdown by voting to raise taxes to help close a $1.75 billion budget deficit.
State officials say the article, published Tuesday in The Jackson Citizen-Patriot newspaper, could give an unfair advantage to students who had not yet taken the test. Not all schools administer the examination on the same day. The test, which determines compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law, has to be identical for all students.